







=^^%^ 



:* 
























^O 






II 









^—.. _- 

TO 




"il 


talmi.BlOiflFml'O 

o 
BY 

WILLIAM L. ROYALL, 

OP THE NEW YORK BAR. 


fill" 

i 
1 

• I 
t 


V 




j 




" Judex damnatur cum noceas ahsolvitury 




O 


1 




NEW YORK: 
E. J. HALE & SON, PUBLISHERS, 
* 17 Murray Street. 


i 




^ 1880. 


i 



A REPLY ll 



TO 



a 



AFflOrstoiMflEormFOfllS, 



n 



WILLIAM LJ-'^ROTALL 



OP THE NEW YORK BAR. 



''Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur. 



NEW YORK: 

E. J. HALE & SON, PUBLISHERS, 

17 Murray Street. 

1880. 






48 65 55 

JUL 1 7 1942 



PREPAOE 



In the following pages I have endeav^ored to write 
the truth, and I have written it without regard to the 
matter of whom it may hurt. I liave said some hard 
things, and I have not attempted to soften their native 
rugged n ess by sugar coatings. 

I look upon the book to which I have attempted a 
reply as a wilful, deliberate and malicious libel upon 
a noble and generous people, amongst wliom I was 
born and raised, and in full sympathy with whom I 
hope to live and die. I look upon its author as one 
of the most contemptible fellows of those who have 
libelled that people, and not at all less contemi)tible 
because highly endowed with intellect; but rather 
more so, because, with all the disposition towards 
grovelling malice which a weaker man could have, he 
has yet far greater powers to injure, and he has de- 
liberately used those powers to their full extent. 

I have made no mealy-mouthed defence of the people 
of the South. It is not on bended knee and with cring- 
ing accent that, self-appointed advocate though I be, I 
have brought their cause before the world. I have 
attempted to speak for a race of whom the males are 
men, as I believe those men would have their race 
sj)oken for. 



Writing in this spirit, I feel that those who do me 
the honor to read this essay are entitled to know some- 
thing of who and what I am, in order that they may 
be the better able to judge what weight is to be given 
to what I say. 

As a young Virginian, I was a soldier in the Con- 
federate army, from the beginning of the war to the 
end of it. After the war I practised law, in Eichmond, 
Va., until January", 1880, when 1 founded a daily news- 
paper, called '' The Commonwealth," and edited it un- 
til August 1, 1880, in a vain endeavor, along with the 
rest of the "rebel element" there, to save my native 
State from the infamous brand of repudiation, which 
the Kepublicans and the scalawag native white popu- 
lation were seeking to put upon her From the time 
that repudiation has been an issue in Virginia politics, 
I have been prominently connected with public affairs 
there. I mention these things, to show that I have 
been in a position to know the temper and feelings of 
the Southern people. I do not perceive that anything 
further personal to myself would be interesting or use- 
ful to the public, and I shall, therefore, proceed with 
the work which 1 have undertaken. 



'iFo8l'sEiTaii,lfOi»ftlieFils," 



REPLIED TO 



CHAPTER I. 

A PRETENDER UNMASKED. 

This is a small book; but it would be difficult to 
find more malice in a large one. Tliat it is written with 
great cleverness, it is needless to say. Tbe poi)ularity 
to which it has attained is the surest evidence of that. 
It pretends to be a picture of life and manners in the 
Southern States. Those who know tlie people of those 
States, know it to be no picture, but they recognize in 
it a grotesque caricature. It contains just enough of 
truth to give color, skilfully wrought into a warp and 
woof of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi. Manifestly, 
the writer has seen much of the life and ways of the 
people of the South, and he has learned much of those 
people. Instead, however, of using his knowledge to 
represent them fairly, he has used it to misrepresent 
them. Much as the writer has seen of the people of 
that section, be does not know them. He could not 
paint a picture of Southern life, if he tried— and his 



6 



object Las been to mislead. He lias manifestly heard 
a good deal of the uegro dialect j and yet Lis represen- 
tations of that dialect are ridicnlons to tLose wLo Lave 
been raised witL tLe negro. His negro conversations 
are no more like the real langnage of the negro tLan 
a Chinaman's pigeon Euglisli is like tLe EuglisL of 
Herbert Spencer. He comes abont as near represent- 
ing tLe negro dialect correctly, as tLe EtLiopian stage 
players, wLo never saw a negro, usually come. 

Had ''Tlie Fool" possessed tLe knowledge of SoutL- 
ern character, necessary to draw it to the life, he would 
never have blundered here ; and a blunder at this 
point inevitably betrays, to the knowing, the imi)os- 
tor who pretends that he understands that people. 

We read, in the eleventh and twelfth chapters of 
the Book of Jndges, that tliere was war between the 
Epliraimites and tlie Gileadites, and that the Gileadites 
slew many of the Ephraimites, even unto all that fell 
into their hands, when they ascertained that they were 
Ephraimites. Tberetbre, when an unlucky wight of an 
Ephraimite fell into the hands of the Gileadites, it is 
not unnatural that he should have denied his nation- 
ality. The Gileadites, however, had one sure test for 
an Ephraimite. The latter could not pronounce the 
Hebrew letter sh in the word Shibboleth. Conse- 
quently, when a stranger was suspected of being an 
Ephraimite, he was subjected to this test, and if the 
answer came Sibboletk, off went his head. Milton has 
commemorated the fact in the following lines : 

" Without reprieve, adjudged to death, 
For want of well pronouncing Shibboleth." 



The Ephraimites' " want of well pronouncing' Shib- 
boleth," did not betray him more snrelj' , than " Thi^ 
Fool's" ridiculous negro conversations betray him. 

When a writer undertakes to describe the life and 
manners of the Southern people, and makes the 
negroes talk a lingo, composed in part of accurate and 
correct English, and in part of a jargon that never ex 
isted anywhere, save in the imagination of some one 
who supposed he could talk their language a priori, 
we know that lie is an impostor, and is dealing with a 
subject that he is utterly" incompetent to handle. 

Just as, by the same token, we know that the pre- 
tended soldier who can give you marvellous accounts 
of his exploits during the war, and especially at the 
battle of Fredericksburg, was a camp follower or de- 
serter, or something worse, when we hear him talking 
of the charge on ^^ Saint Marye's Hill" ("Fool's Er- 
rand," p. 133).* The work is a systematic and well 
considered libel upon the people of the Southern States 
of this Union, and is very well calculated to do them 
a most foul injury and wrong. 

*The charge was on the hill upon which Mr. John L. Marye's house 
is situated. " The Fool" evidently got the idea in his head that 3Iarye 
was some sort of corruption of Saint Mary. 



CHAPTEE II. 

SOUTHEEN LIFE AND CHARACTER, AS PORTRAYED 
BY '' A FOOL." 

" A Fool's Errand " purports to tell tlie story of 
the resideuce of a Northern man who had served 
through the war iu the Federal army, in the Southern 
States, from the year 1865 to 1877 or 1878. This 
Northerner had gone South in good faith to dwell 
there and to cast in his lot with the people there. It 
recounts a sad life for him, and one of terrible oppres- 
sion and persecution, due to the fact that he was a 
Northern man. It represents the white people as 
almost unanimously animated with the most intense, 
bitter and savage hatred of the negro, viewed other- 
wise than as a chattel, as property— viewed as a com- 
ponent part of society, and very graphically and 
powerfully unfolds a story of wrong, outrage and op- 
pression, of which he was, through years, systemati- 
cally made the victim by the white people. It pretends 
to tell the story of the notorious Ku-Klux plots. It 
represents the entire white population of the South 
that had been in symi)athy with the Confederacj , as 
actively engaged in this Ku-Klux conspiracy, which 
had its ramifications in every county and neighborhood 
of the Southern States, and which beat, hung and shot 
negroes by the thousands, just for the sport of the 
thing. 

To be sure that I do him no injustice, I will quote a 



9 

few passages out of tlie many in which "The Fool" 
describes the state of affairs. A committee of citizens 
having addressed him a note of a somewhat warning 
character, he replies to it, and in that reply he says: 

" Of course, as I have not access to the secret 
archives of the Klan, 1 have no means of verifying this 
estimate. You will recollect that this estimate em- 
braces every unlawful act perpetrated by armed and 
organized bodies in disguise. The entry of the prem- 
ises and surrounding the dwelling, with threats against 
the inmates 5 the seizure and destruction or appropri- 
ation of arms; the dragging of men, women and child- 
ren from their homes, or compelling their flight ; the 
binding, gagging and beating of men and women ; 
shooting at specific individuals, or indiscriminately at 
inhabited houses; the mutilation of men and women in 
methods too shocking and barbarous to be recounted 
here ; burning houses, destroying stock, and making 
the night a terror to peaceful citizens by the ghastly 
horror of many and deliberate murders" (p. 221). 

Again, describing the general condition of the 
country, he says (p. 226): "A strange commentary 
upon civilization; a strange history of peaceful years 
— bloody as the reign of Mary, barbarous as the chron- 
icles of the Comanche. Of the slain there were enough 
to furnish forth a battle field — and all from those three 
classes, the negro, the scalawag and the carpet bagger 
— all killed with deliberation, overwhelmed by num- 
bers, roused from slumber at the murk midnight, in 
the hall or the public assembly, upon the river brink, 



10 

tlie lonely woods road, in simulation of the public ex- 
ecutioner — shot, stabbed, hanged, drowned, mutilated 
beyond descriptiou, tortured beyond conception, * * * 
and then the wounded — those who escaped the harder 
fate — the whipped, the mangled, the bleeding, the torn! 
men despoiled of manhood ! women gravid with dead 
children ! bleeding backs ! broken limbs ! Ah ! the 
wounded in this silent warfare were more thousands 
than those who groaned upon the slox)es of Gettys- 
burg ! Dwellings and schools and churches burned ! 
People driven from their homes and dwelling in the 
woods and fields ! The poor, the weak, the despised, 
maltreated and persecuted." 

In this wholesale game of murder, rapine and plun- 
der, " The Fool " represents that tbe entire white pop- 
ulation of the South— save those that were attached 
during the war to tlie Union — took hnnds, and all from 
a bitter, malignant, unyielding hatred for the negro as 
a component part of society. By consequence, too, he 
represents that they extended this feeling to all per- 
sons who came from the North. At ])age 155 he says : 
'* Whatever or whoever was of the North or from the 
North was the subject of ridicule, denu'nciation and 
immeasurable malignity and vituperation." 

This is the picture of a fearful social condition, and 
if it were a correct one, it would justify ver^- serious 
retlection at the hands of philanthropists generally. 
That it is as false as hell itself, every man who has 
lived in the South knows perfectly well. 

That during what is known as the period of recon- 



11 

structioD, in several of the Soiitliern States there 
were violence, disorder, and possibly outrage, no 
candid Southerner will deny. But that there was any 
such state of affairs as "The Fool" represents— a 
wholesale plot in which all or any considerable por- 
tion of the people were engaged — every man, woman 
and child Avho knows anything of the subject, knows to 
be ridiculous. And yet, I doubt not that this " Fool's " 
picture of the state of society in the South will be 
accepted by the world as drawn to nature. The 
Northern and Western parts of this Union are blessed 
with a credulity touching all matters which tend to 
bring the Avhite people of the Southern States into 
disgrace and contempt, which, as an article of Faith, 
wonld meet the requirements of all that the most 
enthusiastic professor of the Christian religion could 
ask for. No story, however monstrous, which repre- 
sents a Southern community in an attitude of violence 
and detiant turbulence, is too gross for Northern belief. 
The typical idea of the Southerner is that of a long, 
lank man, with scraggy hair and beard, and broad 
brimmed, slouch hat, who has no less than two 
revolvers always concealed about his person, which he 
will immediately use with deadly effect, whenever an 
opportunity to trespass upon some other person's rights 
occurs. Without taking the trouble to inform them- 
selves correctly touching the peoi)le of the South, they 
accept any derogatory story that timid sensationalists 
or designing scoundrels may choose to invent, as the 
truth regarding those people. I have met frequently 
with curious and absurd illustrations of this. 



12 

Oolouel S , of South Carolina, related to me an 

amusing instance of it. A few years back he was re- 
turning home from a summer's sojourn at the Green- 
brier Wbite Sulphur Springs of West Virginia, byway 
of Eichmond, Va. On the way, two gentlemen got on 
the train, returning from the Hot Spriugs in Bath 
County, Virginia, where they had been for some time 
taking the hot baths for rheumatism. One was a Mr. 

A , of Boston, and the other an acquaintance of 

Colonel S , Mr. B , of Charleston, S. C. They 

had become well acquainted with each other, and had 
frequently talked over the condition of the South. 

Mr. B was a hon vivantj and was very fond of what 

was good to drink as well as of what was good to eat. 

In the course of the journey he came to Colonel S , 

and told him that the gentleman from Boston had 
some of the finest brandy he had ever seen ; that he 
had given him two drinks of it, but he wanted another, 
and was ashamed to ask him for it. <' Come," says he, 
"let me introduce you to him, and he'Jl offer you a 
drink, and in that Avay I'll get another." Colonel 

S thanked him, but begged to be excused. Soon 

afterwards he saw B talking very confidentially 

to A , and nodding significantly at himself, and 

very soon the two came up, and Mr. A was pre- 
sented to Colonel S . A seemed very anxious 

to play the agreeable, and offered the party some of 
his brandy. In this way B got bis drink. 

When the party arrived in Eichmond, B went 

on through, but Colonel S and his Boston friend 



13 



stopped. They went to their rooms and dressed, and 

soon after, the Bostonian meeting Colonel S , 

asked him to go over to the bar and get a julep. S 

asked to be excused. 

" Oh," says A , " don't you mind me. Pm all 

right. I wouldn't tell on you for the world. I don't 
care how many of them are killed." 

On hearing this S took in the situation. He 

saw at once that B , to get his drink of brandy, 

had told some story on him that would excite the Bos- 
tonian's interest and would thus lead him to seek 

S 's acquaintance, when an ofier of the brandy to 

the party w^ould follow. He therefore went with 

A to the bar. Whilst standing there he said, 

" What tale did B tell you about me, anyhow !" 

"Oh," says A , "don't you mind me; I'm not 

going to tell on you. I don't care if you was to kill 
all of them." 

" But what," says S , " did he tell you about 

me?" 

" Oh," says A , " your friend told me all about 

your troubles. He told me about your being a Ku- 
Klux, and having killed those three negroes, and 
about your being up here in the mountains hiding 
around to keep from being caught." 

"JS'ow that just shows," said S , "how you 

people get fooled. I'm no Ku-Klux, and I never killed 
a negro in my life. I'm not that sort of a man." 

"Oh, never you mind," said A , "I'm all right. 

I'm not going to tell on you. You can just feel per- 
fectly satisfied about that." 



14 



And he parted witli S under the full belief that 

he was a terrible Ku-Klux, and has, no doubt, many 
times since made his children's hair stand on end with 
accounts of the desperate, ruffianly Ku-Klux that he 
met on that trip. Mr. Conkling would do well to put 
the account of these three murders into his scraj) book 
to swell the list of the helpless negroes who have been 
assassinated. 

I will mention another ridiculous thing of this sort 
that came under my observation. 

After Mr. Tilden had been elected President of the 
United States, but before Mr. Hayes took his seat, a 
wag came into the City of Eichmond one evening on a 
crowded train. There was, as usual, a large crowd of 
idle, lazy negroes standing around the depot. Tliis 
wag jumped oft* amongst them, and commenced going 
from one to another, making a cross mark with a piece 
of chalk on the back of each. Somebody asked what 
he was doing it for. '' Oh," says he, *' Mr. Tilden sent 
me word that I could have all I could mark." A panic 
ensued amongst the negroes, which extended very 
considerably beyond those at the depot. I afterwards 
heard of this thiug being seriously told out in Minne- 
sota as an evidence of a desire and purpose upon the 
part of the Southern people to re-enslave the negroes 
if they could. 



15 



CHAPTER III. 

THE REAL SITUATION AT THE SOUTH — THE CARPET 
BAGaERS— A. W. TOURGEE. 

He wbo would really understand the present state 
of affairs in the Soutb, and the temper and feeling of 
the people toward the negro and toward the govern- 
ment, must take a retrospective view of society there 
for the past twenty years. 

In 1860 there can be no doubt that a large part of 
the population of the Southern States was opposed to 
a secession of those States from the Union. But when 
once the act of secession was accomplished and the 
tocsin of war bad sounded, the entire white popula- 
tion, almost as one man, became ardent sympathizers 
with the Confederacy, and earnest supporters of its' 
cause. Leaving out of view an inconsiderable part of 
the mountains of the South, and leaving out of the 
account such cowardly vagabonds as would profess 
friendship for one cause or another, according as the 
immediate profession would tend to save their persons 
from tlie risk of war — persons who were no more 
friendly to the Union than to the Confederacy, but 
who were eternally friendly to themselves alone — it 
would be safe to say that after tbe date when the first 
battle of Manassas was fought, there were not twenty- 
five persons in any one of the Southern States who did 
not sympathize heart and soul with the Confederacy 
and its cause. 



16 

" The Fool " has represented that there was a con- 
siderable body of the people that remained true all 
through the war to the Union, who exhibited the 
highest heroism in defying tlie Confederacy, and who 
were subjected to outrageous treatment for their 
loyalty to the United States. This is all the merest 
bosh and stuff. Let any man name the individuals in 
any neighborhood who sympathized with the Union, 
and I will undertake to show them to have been a set 
of selfish, cowardly skulkers from military service, 
with a rare exception here and there. 

It is altogether a mistake, too, to believe, as many 
Northerners do, and as "The Fool" would represent, 
that the lower orders of society were/lragooned into sup- 
port of the Confederacy by the dominating higher and 
slave holding class. The institution of slaver3 , leaving 
the slave owner great leisure time, gave greater oj)por- 
tunities for the cultivation of all those relations of life 
which tend to produce individuality of character, than 
any other condition of life of which we have an ac-| 
count. Each slave owner, producing from his own 
resources almost everything that was necessary to life, 
was independent in a measure, of ever^^ one else, and, 
being under no necessity to exert himself in the way of 
manual toil, his attention was principally engaged with 
what goes in the direction of tlie ornamentation and 
embellishment of life. The individuality of character 
which this mode of life tended to arouse, was not con- 
fined to those who were slave owners ; it extended from 
them, by contagion, to all orders of life. The '^poor 



17 

white man " was as prompt to resent any apparent 
trespass upon his rights or personal dignity at the 
hands of his rich neighbor, as the rich neighbor would 
have been to resent the same thing at the hands of his 
social -peer. Many a court green has witnessed a rich 
slave owner receive a black eye and a bloody nose from 
a '' poor white man" of his neighborhood in retaliation 
for some slight which the poor man took as an indig- 
nity. This individuality of the people was exhibited 
in a marked manner in their jury trials. All orders of 
the white people were liable to jury service in Virginia, 
and I think I should risk nothing in saying, that in the 
thirty years preceding the war, there were more hung 
juries in the State of Virginia than in the States of 
New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachu- 
setts and Maine combined, during the same period. 
Each man, therefore, of the population, went into the 
movement for the establishment of the Confederacy, 
from his own desire to see it established, and not be- 
cause he was driven into it by terror of his more j)ower- 
ful neighbor. Tliey made a fierce and a desperate 
struggle to accomplish their end, fully aware of what 
was at stake, but in no measure intimidated by the 
possibility of defeat. Having exhausted themselves, 
they threw down their arms with the most unreserved 
l)urpose of abiding by the issue. They recognized the 
judgment of the tribunal to which they had appealed 
as deciding two things: first, that there existed no 
right or power in any State to withdraw from this 
Union, but that it was, in the language of the Supreme 



18 

Court, "an indissoluble union of indissoluble States;" 
and second, that the institution of slavery was to be 
forever at an end in the Southern States. Having 
appealed to the tribunal of arms, declaring that before 
that tribunal the}^ would make good the other side of 
both these propositions, and their chosen tribunal 
having decided agaiust them on both points, it never 
entered into their heads to say or do one thing that 
could be said to be in contravention of the judgment 
that it had pronounced. 

They accepted the result of the war as having settled 
both these points, and having placed them beyond the 
domains of controversy. They looked, however, with 
the utmost horror and dismay upon the suggestion 
that the ballot was to be placed in the hands of their 
former slaves. With the disfranchisements imposed 
upon themselves, they saw that this might well lead to 
the entire rule and dominion of each State passing 
into the hands of those slaves. They reflected that 
themselves were a proud and haughty people, de- 
veloped by the habits and modes of thought of gen- 
erations into a race peculiarly sensitive to whatever 
may have the appearance of personal indignity. They 
saw the African, on the otlier hand, totally destitute 
of every element in human character that governmental 
aptitude demands. Neither he, nor any generation of 
his ancestors, had ever had any instruction in those 
matters that are essential to a just appreciation of the 
responsibilities of a ruler. His ancestor had been 
brought to this country a savage — to bring him here 



19 

be bad been trapped and lassoed in tbe jungles of bis 
native foresc as men bunt wild beasts. Tbe negro's 
position after coming bere bad been more tbat of a 
domestic animal tban of a member of societ^^ 

How could tbe dominant race, being a race sucb as 
tbe Soutbern people are, look upon tbe prospect of com- 
plete dominion over tbemselves passing by one single 
move to tbese tbeir former slaves, witbout considering 
it one of tbe most fearful tbroes and revolutions to 
wbicb society could fall a victim ? Wbo can blame 
tbem for looking upon tbis as tbe very worst evil tbat 
could befall tbem ? Wbo can blame tbem if tbey 
sliould bave determined to die ratber tban see it ac- 
complished "? Wbo can deny tbat to tbeir minds it 
was tbe same tbing as turning tbemselves over to plun- 
der, murder and rapine '? Suppose tbat by some sweep 
of a magician's wand it sbould be so ordained tbat tbe 
monkeys in Africa sbould become tbe dominating race 
tliere, and tbat tbe men and women of Africa's wastes 
sbould bow tbeir beads in submission to monkey rule. 
Wbo is be, bearing tbe form and semblance of a man, 
wbo would not sbare in tbe indignation of tbe buman 
beings tbere, and wbo would not justify tbem in 
oi)posing tbis dominion, wbetber by sbot gun or by 
fraud ? How could fraud be predicated upon resistance 
to sucb a state of things 1 

Lieutenant-Colonel Napier, of tbe Britisb armj^, wbo 
bas perhaps seen the Bushman of Soutbern Africa to 
as much advantage as any other person, has given tbe 
following grapbic x>icture of him : 



20 

" The Dutch Boer, the Griqua, the Bechuana, the 
Kaffir, all entertain the same dread of, and aversion 
to, those dwarfish hordes, who, armed with their 
diminutive bows and poisoned arrows, recklessly plun- 
der and devastate, without regard either to nation or 
color, and are in their turn hunted down and destroyed 
like beasts of prey, which, in many respects, they re- 
semble. Time, a knowledge of and an occasional 
intercourse with people more civilized than themselves, 
have made little change in the habits and disposition 
of this extraordinary race. The Bushman still con- 
tinues unrelentingly to plunder, and cruelly to destroy, 
whenever the opportunity presents itself. His resi- 
dence is still amongst inaccessible hills, in the rude 
cave or cleft of the rock, on the level karroo, in the 
shallow burrow, scooped out with a stick, and sheltered 
with a frail mat. He still, with deadl^^ effect, draws 
his diminutive bow, and shoots his poisoned arrows 
against man and beast. Disdaining labor of any kind, 
he seizes when he can on the farmer's herds and flocks, 
recklessl}^ destroys what he cannot devour, wallows 
for consecutive days with vultures and jackals amidst 
the carcasses of the slain, and, when full}^ gorged to 
the throat, slumbers in lethargic stupor like a wild 
beast, till, aroused by hunger, he is compelled to 
wander forth again in quest of prey. 

'^ When he cannot plunder cattle, he eagerly pursues 
the denizens of the waste, feasts indifferently upon the 
lion or the hedge hog, and, failing snch dainty mor- 
sels, philosophically contents himself with roots, bulbs, 



21 

locusts, ants, pieces of liide steeped in water, or, as a 
last recourse, he tightens his girdle of famine, and as 
Pringle says, 

* He lays him down, to sleep away, 
In languid trance, the weary day,' 

" Whether this precarious mode of existence may, oi 
may not have influenced the personal appearance of 
the Bushmen, it is difficult to say, but a more wretched 
looking set of beings cannot be easily imagined. The 
average height of the men is considerably under five 
feet, that of the women little exceeding four. Their 
shameless state of nearly comi)lete nudity, their brutal- 
ized habits of voracity, filth, and cruelty of disposi- 
tion, appear to place them completely on a level with 
the brute creation ; whilst the clicking tones of a lan- 
guage, composed of the most unpronounceable and dis- 
cordant noises, more nearly resemble the jabbering of 
apes than sounds uttered by human beings." 

Suppose that through some social convulsion these 
Bushmen should be ordered into power and control 
over their neighbors, the Dutch Boer, the Griqua, the 
Bechuana, or the Kaffir. Would it be expected that 
the latter should submit to the rule ? Would they not 
rise in the majesty of their nature and protest that it 
was a mockery of human government to force human 
beings, developed to their point in civilization, to bow 
in obedience to the rule of such beasts as these? 
They would, and every man, woman and child on this 
earth who knows the sentiments of human nature, 
would clap and applaud the act. 



22 



I do not of course mean to say, that the civilization 
of the Southern negro is advanced no further than that 
of the Bushman. But I do mean to say, that the differ- 
ence between the civilization of the Bushman and that 
of any of his neighbors, the Kaffir for instance, is not so 
wide as that between the Southern negro and the 
Southern white. I mean to say, that tliere would be 
more show of reason to force the Kaffir to submit to 
the rule of the Bushman than there would be to force 
the Southern white man to submit to the rule of the 
Southern negro. 

It altogether fails to meet the exigencies of the case 
to say that the Southern people, having held the 
negroes in their state of slavery, are themselves re- 
sponsible for their present state of civilization. This 
is not a question as to who is resi)onsible for the con- 
dition of things; it is an inquiry" as to what is the real 
condition. Whoever may be responsible, the fact 
nevertheless exists, that the negro in his present state 
is not fitted to be put in dominion over the white 
people, and that conclusion being arrived at, disputes 
as to who is responsible for the situation will do for 
the entertainment of the male and female old women 5 
but statesmen and practical i)eople have no time for 
them. 

Now, from the very ending of the war the Federal 
government exhibited a fixed determination to force 
the white people of the South to bow their necks to 
the negroes' yoke. It was decreed that a race, trans- 
formed in the twinkling of an eye from slave to free, 



* 23 

should be placed in absolute power over the race that 
for generations had held them as slaves. This was 
contrary to nature, and it was not reasonable to sup- 
pose that it could be done without producing violent 
social commotions. I will not deny that there have 
been such ; but that they were not so violent as to 
drape the entire land in mourning, is the only surpris- 
ing thing about the whole matter. 

From the very ending of the war the edict went 
forth from Washington that no man should hold office 
in the Southern States who could not swear that he 
had had no sympathy with the Confederacy. As the 
entire white population had been in earnest sympathy 
with the Confederacy, this confined the possibility' 
of governmental agencies to the negroes and such 
strangers as might happen to come there, ^o negroes 
could be found who were competent to discharge the 
offices of government, which practically confined the 
incumbency of office to the strangers who might hap- 
pen to offer themselves. There was no lack of these. 
The number who were willing to forego all the enjoy- 
ments of their own homes to assist in the patriotic 
duty of '' reconstructing the rebel States," was equal 
to what the most enthusiastic patriot could have hoped 
from his countrymen, and the utter unselfishness with 
which they took possession of every office that had a 
salary attached to it, was in perfect keeping with the 
patriotism of their natures. The whole South was at 
once overrun with the larvae of the North. Wherever 
there dwelt a scoundrel, who feared that his neighbors 



24 

would give him his deserts in the form of a coating of 
tar and feathers, that neighborhood lost a citizen, and 
the South gained an apostle of reconstruction. When- 
ever the womb of the North revolted at its burden, 
and spewed forth some putrid mass of crime, the South 
received a patriot who knew nothing but "restoration 
of the Union," and devotion to the " poor downtrodden 
negro." These vultures and harpies came into every 
neighborhood where an office was to be filled. They 
inflamed the minds of the negroes with sensational 
stories of a determination on the part of the white peo- 
ple to re-enslave them. They made them believe that 
unless they organized themselves, and stood shoulder 
to shoulder, the white people would again reduce them 
to slavery. They organized them into what were 
called " Union Leagues" — organizations that had but 
one watchword, opposition to the whites. These " car- 
pet baggers," for this was the name with which the 
people dubbed them, had but one purpose in all this, 
and that was to use the negroes^ ballots to put them- 
selves into all the offices in each State. Backed by 
the Federal Government they succeeded, and from the 
time that their governments were established they 
bent all the energies of their natures to swindling and 
plundering the people in every i^ossible way. They 
stole directly and they stole indirectly. They robbed 
the public treasuries of every dollar they contained, 
and then increased the taxes of the people to replenish 
them that they might have more to steal. When all 
was absorbed that these sources would furnish, they 



25 

created the States' bonds, sold them for twenty-five 
and thirty cents on the dollar, and stole that, leaving 
the people with the burden of the bonds upon them. 
All this by men who had no particle of interest in the 
country, except in that part of it which they carried 
upon their dirty persons, l^o people was ever afflicted 
by such a curse as the Southern people were afflicted 
by in these carpet baggers, ^neas must have had 
them in his prophetic eye when, three thousand years 
ago, he described the harpies with which he met on 
the islands of Strophades. 

"Tristius hand illis monstrum nee sgevior ulla 
Pestis et ira Deum Stygiis sesse extulit undis. 
Virginei volncrum vultus, fcedissima ventris 

Proluvies, uncaquas manus, et pallida semper ora fames." 

I will give one illustration of the way in which these 
harpies plundered the people. The town of Vicks- 
burg, Mississippi, contained, in 1868, about thirteen 
thousand inhabitants, of which, about six thousand 
were negroes, and, therefore, non-property holders and 
non-tax payers. It owed nothing at that time, and the 
rate of taxation was very small. In 1868, Yicksburg 
passed into the hands of a carpet bagger government, 
under which it rested until 1872. In that time, those 
carpet baggers had caused the rate of taxation to be 
raised to six per cent., on a heavy assessment of prop- 
erty, and they had fastened upon the town a bonded 
debt of six hundred thousand dollars, bearing ten per 
cent, interest, and a floating debt of over one hundred 
thousand dollars. Having destroyed the credit of the 

2 



26 



place, they issued the scrip, representing the floating 
debt, at from forty to sixty cents on the dollar — that 
is, for an article worth Ave dollars, they would give the 
town's promise to pay ten dollars. Fifty thousand 
dollars would pay for all that was done with all the 
money received, in consideration of this load of debt. 

It requires no careful reading of "A Fool's Errand," 
to discover that ^^The Fool" was one of these carpet 
baggers, and that his errand to the South was that of 
his fellows. Fortunately^, we are not left to the evidence 
which his book furnishes, of the purposes for which he 
went South. We have the good luck to have other 
and complete outside evidence upon those points. 

From the close of the war until 1871, the good old 
State of North Carolina was the victim of a carpet bag 
government, which was as atrocious as any that afflict- 
ed any other Southern State. When her own j)eople 
got possession of their government, her legislature ap- 
pointed a commission of eminent lawyers, to investi- 
gate the villany and rascality of which the State had 
been made a victim during the time of carpet bag 
rule. This commission took a great mass of testi- 
mony, and it has been published as the ^'Eeportof 
the Fraud Commission." It is Document No. 11, of 
Session 1^71-72. And, oh ! it does disclose a period 
of rascality, knavery, theft and plunder, which makes 
the reader rage and gnash his teeth. An account of 
one little transaction which it unearths will be found 
interesting. 

Geo. W. Swepson and certain accomplices, of whom 



27 



one M. S. Littlefield, of l^ew York State, calling him- 
self '^ General/' was the chief, determined to go into 
partnership with the State of North Carolina, in the 
business of building railroads, from the French Broad 
Eiver to the Tennessee line, at Ducktown and Paint 
Rock. An act was accordingly passed by the carpet 
bag negro Legislature of North Carolina, chartering 
the Western North Carolina Railroad, as it was to 
be called, and providing that the State should sub- 
scribe to two thirds of its stock, when certificate was 
made to the Board of Internal Improvement, that one 
third of what it would cost had been subscribed by 
solvent individuals, and the building of the road had 
been put under contract. The State's subscription 
was to be paid for in her bonds, which were to be de- 
livered to the president of the company. In October, 
1868, those who proposed to organize the company 
had a meeting at Morganton- $308,000 was, at that 
meeting, subscribed to the stock, and it was resolved 
that the subscribers should pay up in cash five per 
cent, of their subscriptions. $200,000 of this $308,000 
was subscribed for by ''General" M. S. Littlefield, 
$100,000 by one Reynolds, of Statesville, and $8,000 
by other parties. Littlefield gave his check on a Bal- 
timore banking house, for $10,000, for his five per 
cent, which check was never paid,- and Reynolds 
gave his note for $5,000, for his five per cent., which, 
likewise, never was paid. Five per cent, in money was 
paid on the $8,000. Thus, this great enterprise was 
started on a cash capital of four hundred dollars. 



28 

George W. Swepson was made president of the 
company. 

Shortly afterwards subscriptions were added, mak- 
ing the whole amount $2,000,000. Of tliis additional 
subscription Colonel S. McD. Tate took $500,000, and 
General K. M. Henry took $400,000, and General M. 
S. Littlefield took the bnlance. Nothing was ever 
paid on their subscriptions. The subscriptions neces- 
sary to secure $4,000,000 of the State's bonds were thus 
secured, save only that the requirement of the statute 
that they should be made by solvent individuals, was 
hardly complied with. It was necessary, however, 
under the law, to go one step further. The road must 
actually have been put under contract, before the 
State could be called upon to issue her bonds. But 
with gentlemen as accommodating as General Little- 
field around, this, of course, would not long remain a 
difficulty. It is true, that legislative lobbying had 
theretofore seemed to be his forte, and he had not been 
known to have had much experience in building rail- 
roads, but he was not the man to allow a trifle of this 
sort to stand between a friend and good luck. So he 
took a contract to build the road from Asheville west, 
while Colonel S. McD. Tate took one to build it from 
Asheville to Paint Eock. Thus Mr. Swepson was en- 
abled to certify to the Board of Internal Improvement 
that $2,000,000 of the capital stock had been sub- 
scribed for by SOLVENT individuals, and that the 
building of the road was under contract. He accord- 
ingly made these certificates, whereupon $4,000,000 of 



29 



the bonds of the State of North Carolina were issued 
to him, in payment of her subscription to the road. 
It is refreshing to consider the view which Swepson 
took of the transaction at the time he made the certifi- 
cates. The following question was asked him by the 
commission : 

" Q. Were not those contracts considered at the time a mere formal 
compliance with the charter to procure the issuing of the bonds, and 
without any expectation that either of the parties would comply with 
the terms by doing the work ? " 

"A. It was considered a mere formal compliance in order to get 
possession of the bonds. There was no expectation that either of the 
parties would do the work themselves, or any part of it, and that the 
road would be let to real contractors." 

Within a short time $2,640,000 more of North Caro- 
lina's bonds were issued to him on the same account. 
None of them were able to give any intelligible 
account of how this $2,640,000 came to be issued to 
him, though Mr. Swepson stated, page 213 : 

" In regard to having the second instalment of bonds (after the 
$4,000,000), I think there was an additional subscription made by 
Littlefield, but the five per cent, was not paid by him. My impression 
is, tliat I must have made the certificate to the governor, otherwise I 
do not see how I could have gotten the bonds. But I cannot say, 
whether I did or did not make the certificate; hut I got the bonds.^^ 

Thus under a scheme by which the State was to 
subscribe to two-thirds of the stock when the other 
third was subscribed for hj solvent individuals, and 
the building of the road was put under contract to 
responsible parties, Swepson was put into possession 
of $6,367,000 of the State's bonds, when there had 




30 



been only a sham subscription to $2,210,000 of the 
stock, and the building of the road had been put 
under sham contracts to these sham subscribers. 

Swepson remained president of the company until 
October, 1869. In that time he had disposed, either 
by sale or hypothecation, of $5,089,000 of these bonds, 
leaving$l,278,000 of them in his possession, accounted 
for by him as lost through various accidents and 
misfortunes (page 320). How much of the proceeds of 
these $5,089,000 of bonds the railroad got the benefit 
of, I do not know j but Mr. Swepson has given us an 
interesting account of what he did with $880,000 of 
the proceeds of them. In his testimony he has told 
us, at page 328 (compare page 221), that, thinking he 
saw a good thing down in Florida, he took $160,000 of 
the proceeds, and bought a majority of the capital 
stock of the Florida Central Railroad, and $720,000 of 
it and bought $1,000,000 of the bonds of the Pensacola 
and Georgia Railroad. In answer to the commis- 
sion's questions, regarding this transaction, he stated, 
page 209 : 

" Wlieu I commenced to make these investments, I intended them 
on my own account; but, after the heavy losses I sustained in New 
York and other places, I turned them over to Lictlefield, to secure the 
Western Railroad Company, he agreeing to pay the full amount of the 
Florida investment to that company." 

After Swepson had been president for one year, it 
was determined to turn him out and make Littlefield 
president. I suppose that such a carcass offered pick- 
ings that were too good for any one man to be allowed 



31 

to remain long in possession of it -, and the State hold- 
ing a majority of tlie stock, whoever could control the 
State's vote could be made president. Swepson gave 
the commission the following account of that, p. 217 : 

" In New York, just before the election of president of the com- 
pany, in 1869, Mr. Roberts, the secretary of the company, and Mr. 
Dowell, of Asheville, were caucusing frequently with General Little- 
field. Littlefield came to me and stated that it was determined that he 
should be elected president of the company at the next October meet- 
ing. I told him ' Very well,' but that they must settle with me; that 
a good many of the bonds were pledged as margins for various per- 
sons, and I had lost some of them ; that they must take these bonds 
and assume the margins ; that they must take my investments in 
Florida, and if they would settle up, and let me out with whole bones, 
T would settle with the road in everything, and willingly stand aside 
and say nothing. Littlefield agreed to do so. We both attended the 
meeting at Asheville, where I declined to be a candidate for the presi- 
dency. A caucus of the Republican members of the corporation was 
had, I understood, at which I was not present; but General Littlefield 
told me it was determined to have a Republican president of tie road, 
and that he was to be elected, * * * The meeting of stockholders 
was had, and General Littlefield by them elected president." 

So that, as the Florida investment of the road's 
money turned out badly, it was determined that the 
road might have it. 

It may be imagined that authority for all this stu- 
pendous and infamous robbery was not obtained with- 
out paying for it, and this brings us to the most 
delicious morceau of the whole evidence. We will 
preface this by the statement that all the world now 
knows that "The Fool," the author of "A Fool's 
Errand," who has professed to write an account of his 



32 



experiences in the South, is A. W. Tourgee, a carpet 
bagger, who migrated to North Carolina directly after 
the war, and who held office in North Carolina under 
her carpet bagger government as judge of one of her 
circuits. Mr. Swepson told the commission, pp. 201 to 
203: 

" la the special session of 1868 a bill was passed making an appro- 
priation to the western division of the Western N. C. Railroad, as I 
now remember. That bill did not accomplish the purpose; for the 
reason, as I understand, that no tax was levied to pay the interest. 
In the fall of that year I was elected president of said road. I came 
to Raleigh, and urged the passage of another bill through the Legis- 
lature. I was then told by Littlefield and Deweese, who were a kind 
of lobby lawyers, Littletield being the principal, that I would get no 
bills through the legislature unless I entered into the same arrange- 
ment, which they said the other railroad presidents had made, to pay 
a certain per cent, (ten per cent, in kind) of the amount of the 
appropriations." (Let it be recollected that Littlefield had already 
made his great subscriptions to the stock of the road, and had already 
taken his great contract to build it.) "I understood from Littlefield 
and Deweese that all the other railroad presidents had made such an 
arrangement with them. I had no conversation or agreement with the 
railroad presidents myself; but it was generally understood that each 
of them had employed Littlefield as a lobby law3^er. I then agreed to 
their proposition, and afterwards paid Littlefield upward of $240,000 
in money and some bonds for his services in procuring the passage of 
the bills through the legislature, making appropriations to the western 
division of said road. 

Q. "How did you make those payments to Littlefield, of money 
and bonds? 

A. " I paid money in various ways. Sometimes upon Littlefield's 
order; sometimes by taking up his notes and notes of other parties at 
his request ; sometimes in money to him ; some bonds. 

Q. " "Will you give the names of the individuals to whom these 
several sums of money have been paid ? 



33 



A. "I have a list of the various sums of money paid out, the time 
when paid, and the names of the persons to whom paid, which Hst I 
will furnish hereafter as a part of my testimony. I have it not now 
with me. 

Q. " You stated in the former part of your examination that you 
would furnish a list of the names of persons to whom money and 
bonds were paid. Are you prepared to give that list? 

A. " Since my last examination, I have had a full examination made 
by my clerk and book keeper, Mr. Rosenthal, of the accounts kept by 
him, and I hereby furnish to the committee a copy from the books of 
the account entitled ' M. S. Littlefield with G. W. Swepson.' This 
account I beheve to be correct. The same was kept by my book 
keeper and clerk, Mr. Rosenthal. This list embraces the amount of 
$241,713.31, which I stated in my report made to N. W. Woodfin and 
other commissioners, had been expended to secure the charter and 
appropriations on account of the western division of the W. N. C. 
R.R. Co. 

Q. " Will you please state particularly on what account these vari- 
ous sums of money were paid, and whether you have vouchers for the 
same? 

A. "As T stated in my previous examination, I was told by General 
Littlefield and Deweese that I could get no bills through the legisla- 
ture unless I entered into the same arrangements agreed upon by the 
other railroad presidents, which he said was to pay ten per cent, in 
kind on the amount of the appropriations. In pursuance of this agree- 
ment made with Littlefield, who was the principal man in the negotia- 
tion, the various sums of money were paid out to the different persons 
named in the lists furnished upon orders given by Littlefield, or upon 
notes given by him." 

The account which Mr. Swepson furnished of the 
items of this $241,713.31, paid for getting his bills 
through the legislature, is found at page 316 of the 
report. The first item on the account is : 

"June 11, 1868. To A. W. Tourgee, $200." 
2* 



34 



Near the end of the account the following item ap- 
pears : 

"July 24, 1869. To A. W. Tourgee and protest, $3,502.55." 

Explaining the items of this account, Mr. Swepson 
told the commission, j). 203 : 

"In regard to the item of $3,500, charged to have been paid to A. 
W. Tourgee, my recollection is that this was a draft of A. W. Tourgee, 
drawn on me without authority, and I did not pay it until some time 
after it had gone to protest, when General Liltlefield requested me to 
pay it, and charge it to him on this account. I did so." 

Again, page 218, the commission returned to this 
account and asked the following question : 

Q. "Look over the account furnished by you as charged against 
Littlefield, and explain the items as well as you can recollect, and the 
considerations therefor. 

A. " All these items were paid, as I have before stated, under an 
agreement between me and Littlefield. As to item charged to A. W. 
Tourgee, June 17, 1868, of $200, the account given by Mr. Rosenthal 
is correct." 

We go now to Kosenthal's testimony-, p. 225. After 
stating that he was clerk and book keeper for Swep- 
son from 1865 to the fall of 1870, and that he had 
made out the account which Swepson had filed, and 
that it correctly represented the money that Swepson 
had paid on account of his bargain with Littlefield, he 
was asked : 

Q. " Do you know the consideration for which these various sums 
of money were paid ? 



35 



A. " As to the first item charged against A. W. Tourgee, of $200, 
my impression is that it was a note that was in bank which was over- 
due, and Swepson took it up. It is probable, however, that it is for 
money loaned directly by Swepson to Tourgee. I was told to charge 
it to Littlefield. I was told by Mr. Swepson that he was to pay Little- 
field a certain sum for getting these railroad bills through the legisla- 
ture, and these payments were to be charged against that account. As 
to the second item of $3,502.55 against Tourgee, of date July 24, 1869, 
a draft drawn by Tourgee on Gr. TV. Swepson for $3,500 was presented 
for payment, and payment refused, and it went to protest. Seme time 
afterwards Mr. Swepson instructed me to pay it, and charge it to this 
account, v/hich I did." 

The commission state, at page 21, that they had 
summoned all persons referred to in Swepsou's account 
before them to be examined with reference to the pay- 
ments there charged, and that all had come except 
James Sinclair and Judge Tourgee.* 

''General" Byron Lafliu, a "visiting statesman," 
who did North Carolina the honor to represent one of 
her counties in her legislature, and who figures in 
several places in the report (Mr. Swepson accounts for 
$55,000 of the $1,278,000 that he was short by this 
item, " 55 bonds hyi)othecated with Clews & Co., on ac- 
count of Byron Laliin"), got into an omnibus one day 
to go to the railroad depot on his way North, about 
the time that the carpet bagger government was fall- 
ing to pieces; some one called to him, " Why, general, 
are you not coming back ? " " Oh," said he in reply, 
" is there anything left "?" Little matters of this sort 
are quite sufficient to account for the i)eople of North 

* See Addendum, page 87. 



36 



Carolina having made Mr. Tourgee's stay there quite 
disagreeable to Lim, without resorting to the presump- 
tion that he was unpopular by reason of being a 
I^orthern man. I have no doubt that if '^ General " 
Laflin should come forward to testify in the matter he 
would tell us that his stay was made quite as uncom- 
fortable as Mr. Tourgee's. 

But one result could flow from this state of things. 
Those who looked for peace and order under it, expect- 
ed the laws of nature to reverse themselves. They 
were people who could persuade themselves to believe 
that water could be coaxed into running up hill, or 
that Niagara's torrent might be checked with a finger. 
Just so long as the negroes remained banded into a 
solid organization — held together for the sole and ex- 
clusive purpose of dominating the whites, and just so 
long as the carpet baggers remained amongst the 
people egging the negroes on, and encouraging them 
to maintain their organizations — -just so long there was 
bound to be hostility between the races and bitter and 
undying hatred of the carpet baggers. Be the com- 
munity where it may, the virtue, the intelligence and 
the property of that community must rule it, and 
when the community is divided into two distinctly 
marked races, and one of them contains all the virtue, 
intelligence and property, and the other has none of 
either, then the more civilized race must dominate the 
less civilized, whether it be more numerous or whether 
it be less numerous. If it is not done by direct force, 
it will be done by superior knowledge and art. It 



37 

must be so as between the Southern negro and white ^ 
it would be so as between the Northerner and the 
Chinaman; it must happen between the Englishman 
and the Zulu. 

If the people of the North and West would only 
learn the lesson which reflection and experience long- 
to teach, they would abandon the attempt to force an 
intercommunion of the races in the South, which the 
law^ of nature forbid. They would learn that race 
prejudice is the most powerful force that operates upon 
the human mind, and that all the bayonets on earth 
cannot force a race, holding the relation to another race 
that the white people of the South hold to the negroes, 
to live in submission to that less civilized race. Eisk 
of death is more endurable to them, and a persistent 
effort to force the submission must result in constant 
revolution and bloodshed. 

The people of the North and West are greatly mis- 
taken, too, in their idea of the relations that exist in 
the South between the two races. There is no hostility 
whatever between them when the negroes are let 
alone, and no designing scoundrels stir up strife be- 
tween them for the accomplishment of their own ends. 
The attempt to maintain carpet bag governments in the 
South having been abandoned for several years past, the 
utmost cordiality and amity have come to exist between 
the two races. The two races having been born and 
reared together, each understands perfectly his position 
in the social scale, and neither attempts to invade 
the domain of the other. The negro is pressing himself 



38 



along, acquiring property and educating bis children. 
With nothing to excite the white man's prejudice of 
race, this is telling on him. He is beginning to watch 
with great interest the negro's development from a 
condition of servitude into one that will in time fit him 
for the discharge of a citizen's duties. He aids and 
encourages him in every way in his power. He gives 
him absolute protection in all his rights of person and 
X^roperty. In the courts the negro receives as absolute 
justice when his controversy is with a white man, as the 
white man would receive in a controversy with another 
white man. The white man all over the South is tax- 
ing himself, and heavily too, to furnish free school 
education to the negro, and it is telling wonderfully 
upon that race. A few of the facts relating to this 
matter in the State of Virginia will be interesting in 
this connection. The white people of Virginia over- 
threw the carpet baggers and got possession of their 
government in 1869. From that time to this they have 
annually taxed themselves to keep up an elaborate free 
school system, and the following numbers of negro 
children have been annually taught in the free schools: 

In 1871, there were 38,554 ; in 1872,46,736; in 1873, 
47,506; in 1874, 52,086; in 1875, 54,941; in 1876, 
62,178; in 1877, 65,043; in 1878, 61,772; in 1879, 
35,768 ; in 1880, 68,000. 

Here are more than half a million of negro children 
that the white people of the State of Virginia have 
given the advantages of education to in the past ten 
years. The negroes themselves have contributed little 



39 

or nothing toward the cost of it. The expense of it 
has been voluntarily borne by the white people of the 
State, and that notwithstanding the utter disorgani- 
zation of labor left by the war, the loss of capital and 
the destruction of property, and the terrible pressure of 
a very large public debt, created before the war. The 
difference of conditions being considered, the other 
Southern States show a parallel state of affairs. The 
white people of Yirgiuia have shown the same humane 
spirit in their care for the negro insane. A central 
lunatic hospital has been established for them, in 
which all the insane negroes of the State are placed, 
and they there receive the very same attention and 
care that are bestowed upon the white insane. Every 
medical appliance which the progress of civilization 
shows to be adapted to the treatment of the insane, is 
furnished to these negroes. For the past ten years 
there have been in this hospital an average of nearly 
three hundred patients each year. The very great 
expense of this is voluntarily borne by the white people 
of Virginia. 

As illustrative of the utter absence of hostile feelings 
between the races when they are allowed to dwell 
together without the disturbing influence of selfish 
carpet baggers, I ventnre to make this statement. 
The proprietors of a street car line in Richmond, 
Charleston, Savannah, Mobile or JSTew Orleans, might 
on any day discharge ever}^ white driver and fill their 
places with negroes, and no greater commotion would 
ensue than upon any other ordinary change in a busi- 
ness. 



40 



I should not like to see the result if such an experi- 
ment should be tried in the City of New York or in 
Boston ! 

When the Virginia delegation to the Democratic 
convention, at Cincinnati, went out, one gentleman, a 
delegate from the City of Eicbmond, carried his servant, 
a negro man, with him. On the way to Cincinnati, it 
became necessary to travel all night on the Pennsylva- 
nia Eailroad. The gentleman mentioned, determining 
that his servant should be comfortable, hired a sleep- 
ing berth for him. Mr. Samuel J. Eandall, speaker of 
the House of Representatives, and a prominent candi- 
date for the presidency — so prominent that the great 
State of New York cast her entire seventy votes for 
him — was on the train, and it was so crowded that he 
could not get a sleeping berth. The conductor of the 
train came to this Virginia delegate and asked him if 
he would not make his servant surrender his berth to 
Mr. Randall ; that if he did not, Mr. Randall would 
have to sit uj) all night. The delegate very i>romptly 
told him that he would not; that it was a mere ques- 
tion of whether Mr. Randall should be uncomfortable 
all night or whether his servant should be uncomfort- 
able, and that Mr. Randall had as well be uncomfort- 
able as his servant. And he went to the negro and 
told hiai to let him know if any effort was made to 
deprive him of his berth, and that he would protect 
him. Every Virginia delegate to the convention can 
vouch for the truth of this statement. 

Now, this delegate was in every way identified in the 



41 



most intimate manner with that element in the South- 
ern States which ^' The Fool " represents as hating the 
negro with an intense hatred, and yet he would not 
consent to see his negro servant made uncomfortable 
to make the present speaker of the House of Eepre- 
sentatives, and possible future president, comfortable. 
I would like to see which one of "The Fools" who 
vex the ear of the public with their snivelling lies 
about the oppression of the negro, would have done 
this ! AVhichever one of them had been applied to, he 
would have hastened, with obsequious self-abasement, 
to kick his servant out, that the great man might 
enjoy his ease. 

It is only necessary to leave the white man and the 
negro alone, and they dwell together in perfect peace, 
and the negro will, by degrees, evolve himself into 
such a condition of civilization, as to entitle himself to 
a share in the political administration of the country. 
But, if this constant effort to force an unnatural as- 
similation of the races is kept up, disorder and confu- 
sion must be the result. When a small auger hole is 
bored through the bottom of a tank full of water, if let 
alone, it will, by degrees, draw all the water off and 
leave the tank in perfect condition. But if an attempt 
be made to force the water through this small orifice, 
so that the tank may be emptied in half the time, it 
will burst and great damage will be done. 



42 



CHAPTER IV. 
TREATMENT OF NORTHERNERS IN THE SOUTH. 

"The Fool" represents the Southern people to 
have been animated with a bitter hatred towards all 
people from the Korth. This also is a slander upon 
them, and can easily be shown to be one. They did 
and do have the most intense feeling of hostility for 
all Northerners who, like "The Fool,'' came amongst 
them to band the negroes together as a political ma- 
chine, through which they might be i)lundered and 
robbed. But every Northerner who has gone into the 
South since the war, settled amongst the people, and 
shown an intention to accept the situation as it is, and 
to try and build up the country and retrieve the losses 
of the war, has been received by the people with re- 
spect and hospitality, without any regard whatever to 
the place from whence he came. 

Gilbert C. Walker, of the State of New York, came 
to Virginia in the year 1865, connected with the Fed- 
eral army, and settled at Norfolk, Va. As soon as the 
war was over, he accepted it as ended, and showed by 
all he did and said, that he proposed to live in jieace and 
amity with the people amongst whom he had settled. 
He soon became exceedingly popular. In 1869, when 
the white people of Virginia were given an opportu- 
nity to struggle for the possession of their govern- 
ment, they selected Gilbert C. Walker — Northerner 
though he was, connected with the Federal army 



43 



thoiigli he had been— and made him their candidate 
for governor, against H. H. Wells, a Northerner of the 
carpet bagger stripe, whom the negroes made theirs. 

Walker was elected governor. He served his term 
of four years with great satisfaction to all orders of 
the people, and when he came out of his office, he was 
the most popular man before the white people of Vir- 
ginia in the State. He could have beaten any other 
man in the State, upon a direct vote of the white 
people, for any office within their gift. I have, my- 
self, seen him come into the Richmond Theatre, when 
it was filled from pit to dome, with all classes of peo- 
ple, from the humblest artisan to the proudest scion 
of the old slave holding aristocracy, and I have seen 
the entire body, ladies and gentlemen, rise as one man 
to cheer him. 

As soon as his term of governor was ended, he 
offered himself as a candidate for nomination, by the 
white people, for member of the House of Eepresent- 
atives, from the metropolitan district of Virginia, 
containing the City of Richmond, the capitol of the 
late Confederacy. His competitor for the nomina- 
tion was Col. John H. Guy, a gentlemen of the 
highest integrity and character — universally respected 
and esteemed — a man who had been a distinguished 
colonel in the Confederate army, and who was in every 
way identified with the old slave holding element. Yet 
Wallcer heat Col. Guy, before the white people, ten votes 
to one. He was elected to Congress, served his term 
of two years, returned, and offered again for the white 



44 

people's nomination. This time no one dared to run 
against him, and he was made the white man's candi- 
date, nem. con. 

Colonel Albert Ordway, of Massachusetts, came into 
Eichmond at the surrender, in command of a Massa- 
chusetts regiment. He settled there, and at once 
manifested a purpose similar to Walker's. He gained 
unbounded popularity, w^as constantly sent to the city 
council by the white people — was made their candidate 
for Congress, and was one of the most popular mem- 
bers of the Eichmond club, a social institution, which 
was very small and very select, and composed almost 
entirely of the bluest blood of the old slaveholding 
aristocracy. 

General W. F. Bartlett, of Massachusetts, had been 
a distinguished soldier in the Federal army. He had 
commanded a brigade of negroes at the terrible battle 
of July 30, 1864, known as the battle of '^ The Crater." 
In 1872 he settled in the City of Eichmond. Writing 
to his friends in Massachusetts, he says: "Before we 
had been here a month we found ourselves over- 
whelmed with kindness, cordiality and hospitality 
from the very nicest people here." '' Palfrey'' s Life of 
Bartlett;^ page 235. 

These facts speak for themselves. They give voice 
to louder tones than all the brays of all the fools that 
ever went on errands of plunder and theft. And in- 
stance might be i^iled upon instance, taken from each 
Southern State, indicating the cordial reception which 
the people have ever given to all Northerners who 



45 

have come to settle amongst tliem for the purpose of 
buildiug up the country. They have had no feelings 
of hostility for any Northerners except those who 
have come amongst them to plunder and rob, and to 
band the negroes together as a political machine for 
their own subjection. They have, and in the nature of 
things must have, a deep and abiding hatred for those. 



CHAPTER Y. 

NORTHERN IDEA OF THE ^' REBEL BRIGADIER" — THE 
"rebel brigadier" THE MOST LAW ABIDING 
CITIZEN IN THE COUNTRY — DUPLICITY OF THE 
REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION IN VIRGINIA POLI- 
TICS. 

There is a general belief in the minds of Northern 
people that the white people of the South are a law- 
less, turbulent, disorderly set, quite opposed to every- 
thing in the nature of conservatism. The '^ Rebel 
Brigadier" represents to the Northern mind an em- 
bodiment of all that is opposed to law and order. 
Now, no greater injustice was ever done to a people 
than this error does to the Southern people. There is 
no people now living upon the globe who are so 
entirely conservative in their character as the white 
people of the Soathern States. They fought the late 
war from a sense of duty, and with a deep seated 
conviction that they were right. However much a 



46 

Ii^orthern man may declare tliat the act of the Soutliern 
mail was treason, j^et to the mind of the Southern man 
his act was not ouly right in the sight of God, but en- 
joined upon him by His law. Having failed in his 
contest he has loyally surrendered the propositions for 
which he fought, and he proposes loyally to abide by 
the covenant into which he entered at the end of the 
war. He will not tolerate a suggestion of anything 
which is not in perfect faith with the terms upon 
which the surrender of his arms w^as received. Should 
a Northern State attempt to secede from this Union, 
no part of the country could be relied upon so surely 
to coerce her to resume her proper relations to the 
general Government as the lately seceded States. 
The State of Virginia to-day affords a striking illustra- 
tion of the conservative character of the '' Eebel Brig- 
adier." Before the late war, that State had borrowed 
a large sum of money, wiiich had been ex]3ended in 
creating her railroads, canals and public institutions, 
for which she had given her bonds. Within the past 
five years an effort, headed by Wm. Mahone, who was 
a major-general in the Confederate army, has been set 
on foot to repudiate a large part, if not all, of this 
debt. In the fall of 1879 an election for members of 
the legislature was held in Virginia, and the issue in 
that election was the repudiation or non-repudiation of 
the debt. In that election all the negroes (wiio con- 
stitute the Republican party of the State) voted for 
legislative candidates who favored repudiation, ivhile 
every " Bebel Brlgadier^^ in the State^ save and excejjt 
Wm. Mahonej voted to maTce the State pay her debt. 



47 

There exists to-day in every county in Virginia, a 
feeling of bitterness between the repadiators and the 
debt payers, more intense than any that ever existed 
between any x)olitical factious in the United States. 
Duels have been fought over it, and constant personal 
collisions have occurred and are occurring, and yet 
every single ^' Rebel Brigadier " who now resides in the 
State of Virginia^ except Wm. Mahone^ is on the side of 
the debt payers. 

Here they are by name — every person now living in 
the State of Virginia, who held rank in the Confed- 
erate army of brigadier-general and above, with the 
rank of each : 

1st. General : General Joseph E. Johnston. 

2d. Lieutenant-General : General Jabal A. Early. 

3d. Major-Generals : General Fitz Lee, General W. 
H. F. Lee, General D. H. Maury, General Robert Ran- 
som, General H. Heth, General J. L. Kemper, General 
James A. Walker, General L. L. Lomax, General Wil- 
liam Smith, General G. 0. Wharton, General Samuel 
Jones, General William B. Taliaferro, General Oustis 
Lee, General Thomas L. Rosser, General Charles 
Field. 

4th. Brigadier-Generals : General William H. Payne, 
General Lindsay Walker, General McComb, General 
R. D. Lilly, General D. A. VVeisiger, General John 
Echols, General R. L. T. Beale, General Joseph R. 
Anderson, General John R. Cooke, General Eppa 
Hunton, General J. H. Lane, General M. D. Corse, 
General Beverly Robertson, General T. T. Miinford, 



48 

General William E. Terry, Geoeral William Terry, 
General T. M. Logan, General Williams C. Wickham, 
General P. T. Moore, General Seth Barton. 

This is a galaxy of citizens of which any State that 
ever existed might be proud. No nobler, truer, more 
self-sacrificing men ever lived in any country, than 
those whose names are mentioned above. Show them 
anything that it is their duty to do, and they will do 
it, let the consequences be what they may. 

In the election just held, three presidential electoral 
tickets were run and voted for in the State — two Han- 
cock tickets and one Garfield ticket. One of the Han- 
cock tickets was put in nomination by a convention of 
the " Readjusters " party. All the negroes voted for 
the Garfield ticket, and all the whites, save a percent- 
age too small to be of consequence, voted for one or the 
other of the Hancock tickets. The result was, for the 
Debt payers' ticket, 96,912 votes ; for the ''Readjusters" 
ticket, 31,674; for the Republican ticket, 84,020. Now 
I do not mean to say that all who voted for the debt 
payers' ticket are debt payers. But I do mean to say, 
that a very large proportion of them, perhaps eight 
out of ten, are. It is easy therefore to see how quickly 
the matter of repudiation would be disposed of in Vir- 
ginia if the " Rebel Brigadiers" and the white people 
were allowed to have their wa3', and the Republican 
party did not force the State into repudiation. 

In the contest that is going on in Virginia over this 
question of repudiation, not only are the ^' Rebel 
Brigadiers " on the side of the debt payers, but almost 



49 



all of what is derided as the "rebel element" is on 
the same side. Indeed, there is nothing on the side of 
the debt payers save and except that which is denomi 
uated m the North as the " rebel element." On the 
side of repudiation are all the negroes, i. e., the Ee- 
publican party, and the bummer and office-seeking 
element of the whites. The debt payers' party is 
niade up of those who constituted the controlling 
classes before the war, while the Repudiators' party is 
made up almost entirely of the Republicans in the State 
«. e., the negroes. It is but justice to say that of the 
lew white people in the State who are Republicans, 
some, perhaps a majority, are debt payers. But the 
tact stands, an incontestable fact, that the State of 
Jirgima is before the world this day as a repudiating 
State, and made so by the vote of the Eepublican 
party, and in the face of the fierce and indignant pro- 
test of the "Eebel Brigadiers." Not only did the 
rank and file of the Eepublican voters vote for the re- 
pudiators' candidates in the election of a legislature in 
the fa 1 of 1879, but those Eepublican candidates who 
were elected to the legislature, with but few exceptions, 
voted for the measures of repudiation that were 
biougbt before that body. A bill was brought up for 
Its consideration, known as the Eiddleberger bill, which 
repudiated nearly one-half of the debt straight out 
and provided the machinery for repudiating all the 
rest, and this bill could not have passed either body 
of the legislature without the votes of the Eepub 
bean members, and it was passed through both bodies 

3 



50 



ly their votes. It is not a statute of Virginia to- 
day, solely because her governor, a gallant "rebel" 
colonel who had lost his right arm in battle at the 
head of his regiment, vetoed it, and her constitution 
requiring a vote of two-thirds of the body to pass it 
over his veto, the effort made by the Republican 
members to accomplish that end was defeated by the 
" rebel element*' of her legislature. 

Further, with all the clatter that the Republican 
party makes about it being the party of law and order 
and public credit in this country, its leaders gave all 
the aid aud eucouragement in their power to the repu- 
diation party in Virginia in this same election. The 
negroes vote absolutely at the beck and call of the 
administration of the Federal government. In the 
contest iu Virginia, in the fall of 1879, had the Federal 
administration put in its oar, and made a serious 
effort to control the negro vote, that vote would have 
been cast solidly for the debt payers' candidates. But, 
because the debt payers' party was composed of the 
respectable part of the white people of the State, the 
influence of the administration was all thrown, in a 
silent and secret way, upon the side of the repudia- 
tors, whilst great preteuce was publicly made that the 
administration was on the side of the debt payers. 
One fact will prove this statement beyond the possi- 
bility of cavil. When the canvass was at its hottest, 
Mr. Green B. Raum, next in the Treasury Department 
to the secretary, made public proclamation, that as an 
important part of Mr. Hayes' administration, he had 



51 



ItlltT '^T,^".«'^-«"' ^» officer of internal revenue 
at Petersburg, that .t had been reported to the govern- 

Sec T 'frrf -P>'^-«-; -cl that he hla 
anvt!. '»'!'* t"^"^ government would not tolerate 

any such views ,n one of its ofBcers, and that he must 

fctionTf ir T" *'' ^"'^ "' P^^"'^ <J«^'«- This 
nn ^H IT ^*^'"'"'«t™tio° ^as heralded all over the 
United States, and was in half the papers published 
"aifedT • """'^ «-P"Wicans, wherever thiy reld ' 
raised their eyes to heaven, and thanked God, tha 

rights of honest creditors were safe in his hands. 

Sow It so happened that Tan Aucken was an 
origina debt payer, had been one all along, and was 
one of the fiercest enemies the candidates of repudi" 
tion had in his vicinity. But one Hathaway was a 
CO lector of customs at Norfolk, drawing regularly a 
salary of |i,800 per annum. This man, during al this 
.me edited a daily paper at Norfolk, 'called the i^ 

n the?;:' "'r '"^ ''''''''' ^^'^•'-'^ of repudiation 
m the State. Now, though the attention of the ad- 
ministration was constantly called to the injury which 
he was doing the debt payers' party with his paper, 
he was never once molested, and was allowed to draw 
his salary regularly from the Treasury of the United 
btates to supply him with means with which he could 
force the State of Virginia to repudiate that debt, 
which her " rebel " sons were trying to make her pay! 
Tbe credit of the Republican party was preserved, 



52 



while no harm was done to the repudiators' party. 
All the aid in the administration's power was thus 
secretly given to the party of repudiation in the State. 
The result of the war left the white people of 
Virginia flat on their backs. Their farms were devas- 
tated, denuded of stock and farming implements; 
fences were gone; their slaves, the real productive 
property, upon the faith of which the public debt had 
been contracted, were taken from them without com- 
pensation. There are many persons who would not 
have been surprised had these people in their despair 
said to their creditors : " We have been subjugated, 
we have been conquered, we have been robbed by our 
conquerors of all that we had when we borrowed your 
money. We refuse to be made the victims of plunder, 
and still hold ourselves bound to pay. Go, seek your 
money at the hands of those who have forcibly taken 
from us our means of payment." At least it would 
have created no surprise if, seeing the newly enfran- 
chised race bent on repudiation, they had stood aside 
and permitted them to work their will. They have 
done neither of these things. To its everlasting glory 
be it said, the derided " rebel element" of Virginia has 
fought and fought, and is still fighting, against the 
Bepublican party of Virginia for the privilege of pay- 
ing to their creditors— citizens of the Northern States 
and of Great Britain— what their State owes to them. 
And they have done this, notwithstanding the fact 
that it is they themselves who must pay it all, the 
Eepublican voters being almost all non-property 



53 

holders. Surely these be people who may repel the 
charge of turbulence and lawlessness! Surely these 
be people who may claim, that they are animated by 
the very highest sense of duty and conservatism. 

The hydra of which we flippantly speak as "The 
Commune" is lifting its many heads in every quarter 
of this Union. The '' strikes " of 1876 faintly foretoken 
the commotions which will tear and rend our social 
fabric if the discordant elements which make up the 
population of the United States should ever get into 
the full jangle of discord. When the dreadful day 
arrives that shall witness these hostile elements in full 
battle array against each other, those to whom the 
widoAV and the orplian, the aged and the infirm, the 
weak and the property owner will look with the most 
eager hope, if it occur within their generation, will be 
the " rebels," whose yell was loudest and fiercest on 
the blood-stained heights of Gettysburg. Should this 
awful day arrive when they have passed away, then 
will it be to those, the descendants of these, who were 
taught at their mothers' knees that they must stand 
by the right, whatever may betide. 



54 



CHAPTER YI. 

THE USUAL COMPARISON BETWEEN NORTHERN AND 
SOUTHERN CIVILIZATION. 

It is quite the fashion to institute comparisons be- 
tween the civilization of the South and the civilization 
of the North, always to the very great disadvantage 
of that of the South. In October, 1880, Senator Oonk- 
ling made a speech in the City of New York which has 
been heralded from one end of this Union to another 
by his claquers, as a very great production of a very 
great man. Though the speech contains no direct 
assertion that barbarism reigns at the South, whilst 
the sun of civilization shines upon the Korth alone, its 
whole warp and woof is substantially this. After 
picturing a land of violence and disorder, he said, 
^* The cause of such a condition, and the consequences, 
if it succeeds, are matters which no sane, intelligent 
man can put out of view; and yet he who discusses 
these must be told, in the coarse parlance of the day, 
that he waves ' the bloody shirt.' It is a relief to re- 
member that this phrase and the thing it means is no 
invention of our politics. It dates back to Scotland 
three centuries ago. After a massacre in Glenfruin, 
not so savage as has stained our annals, two hundred 
and twenty widows rode on white palfreys to Stirling 
Tower, bearing each on a spear her husband's bloody 
shirt. The appeal waked Scotland's slumbering sword, 
and outlawry and the block made the name of Glen- 
fruin terrible to victorious Clan Alpine, even to the 
third and fourth generation." ^ 



-ii 



55 

Mr. Conkling was most unfortunate in liis selection 
for illustrating the barbarism of the South. Occasions 
maj and do arise in every Southern State when widows 
may exhibit the bloody shirts of their slain husbands ; 
and yet, while there is a deep feeling of sympathy for 
the widow, there is no feeling of regret for the hus- 
band; and common consent, which has become com- 
mon law, applauds the act of the slayer. These occa- 
sions arise when an outraged husband takes the law 
into his own hands, and slaughters, where he finds 
him, whether at church or at fair, the traitor who has 
invaded the sanctity of his home and corrupted the 
wife of his bosom. Mr. Conkling's illustration may 
well suggest the inquiry whether that is a lower civili- 
zation which justifies the outraged husband in slaying 
the man who has thus ruined his home and his life, 
even though it should leave to a widow the legacy of 
a husband's bloody shirt ; or whether that is a higher 
civilization which exhibits a terror-stricken husband 
thus wronged standing in the presence of his wife's 
paramour, shot gun in hand, yet trembling and afraid 
to shoot. 

The habit which in all the Southern States prevails 
to a more or less extent, of protecting character by 
holding him who assails it to a personal account, is also 
constantly referred to as an evidence of the barbarism 
of the Southern people. I do not propose to say one 
word in justification of the duello. But this at least 
can be said of those regions where it is resorted to. 
The possessor of a fair character may feel sure, unless 
he do something to forfeit it, that he will pass his life 



56 



in fall possession and enjoyment of it, exempted from 
all danger of having it besmirched and befouled with 
slanderous and calumnious statements regarding him. 

With this blessing attained by tolerating the duello^ 
the inquiry may well suggest itself, whether, as an in- 
stitution, it is the greatest evil with which society can 
be afflicted. 

Is it worse that a man should lose his life in a duel 
than that, after having lived blamelessly and with the 
respect and esteem of his acquaintances, he should be 
made the target for every irresponsible slanderer who 
may choose to defame him, and be brought down, after 
a life of credit, in sorrow and shame to the grave? 

On the 25th day of October, 1880, the journal pub- 
lished in N^ew York City, called Truth, in an editorial 
article, spoke in the following terms of James Gordon 
Bennett, Esq. : 

^' Well, it seems to be a desire on the part of Mr. 
Kelly to rid the community of one of the most despic- 
able, low-lived, debauched scamps who ever disgraced 
his father's name and brought odium on his very 
nationality. Mr. James Gordon Bennett, since child- 
hood, has been a drunkard, an associate of women of 
the town, a night brawler, a coward, a cur. No re- 
spectable society will admit him — no ladies will ac- 
knowledge his suit — no gentlemen will shake him by 
the hand. He is forced to the comj)aniouship of the 
Gunny Bedfords, Wrights, Sanfords, Ikey Bells, Larry 
Jeromes, and other persons of more or less respecta- 
bility and notoriety." 

This publication is made of a man who is the pro- 



57 



prietor of the most influential newspaper in the United 
States ; who is one of the wealthy men of Kew York 
City ; who is a member of the Union Club, of New York 
City, the most prominent social institution in the city 
— who associates in that institution with the leaders 
of New York societj^, and who visits at the houses of 
the leaders of New York society. If these published 
charges be true, what sort of a character can James 
Gordon Bennett have ? If they be false, what is the 
value of his character to him ? Only those who know 
him personally — and they must necessarily be few — 
can know that they are false, and to the rest of the 
world — who only know him as his character is pub- 
lished to the world — he is the sort of man that that 
I)ublication proclaims him. Now, no man of any re- 
spectability could live in any community in any South- 
ern State who allowed such a thing as this to be pub- 
lished about him, without risking his life in an en- 
counter with the publisher. Consequently, no such 
publications are ever made, unless concerning men 
notoriously without character. Which is the higher 
order of civilization — that which permits a man to se- 
cure to himself the enjoyment of that character which 
a long and blameless life has entitled him to, or that 
which compels him to stand helplessly still whilst 
character thieves steal it from him ! 

It does not, therefore, follow, because this institution 
is tolerated to a certain extent in the Southern States, 
that the people of those States are barbarians. 

3* 



58 



CHAPTER YII. 

THE DISCUSSION IN RELATION TO POLITICAL PAR- 
TIES IN THE UNION — THE TRUE LINE OF DIVISION 
BETWEEN DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS — THE 
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. 

The general theme which we have discussed being 
substantially the true pivot upon which the difference 
between the two great political parties that divide this 
country turns, some remarks upon the respective aims 
of those parties may not be out of place here. 

There is but one point of difference between the 
Republican party and the Democratic party 5 and, 
though that point is always carefully ignored and con- 
cealed in all party proclamations, it is broad, distinct 
and well defined. It is the aim of the Republican 
party to add to the powers of the general government 
— to strengthen the hands of the general government 
until, as is generally believed, that general gov- 
ernment shall have full and undisputed power to 
do whatever it may determine to be most for the 
public good. The Democratic party, on the other 
hand, insists that the true chart of the general 
government's powers are to be found in a strict 
construction of the terms of the original constitu- 
tion, as it may be modified by a construction of the 
amendments in harmony with that original consti- 
tution. The Democratic party insists that the govern- 
ment shall have no powers — shall have no existence — 



59 

outside of what a strict construction of the constitu- 
tion and its amendments may give to it. Tliere is no 
difference between the parties on any other point; 
there is a radical difference between them upon this 
one point. There is no difference between the parties 
upon a question of protective tariff. There are as 
many Democrats in favor of a protective tariff as there 
are Kepublicans in favor of it, and there are as many 
Kepublicans in favor of free trade as there are Demo- 
crats in lavor of free trade. There is no difference 
between the two parties upon questions affecting the 
currency. There are as many Democrats in favor of 
an exclusively metallic currency as there are Eepub- 
licans in favor of it ; and there are as many Eepub- 
licans who favor a system of inflated paper currency 
as there are Democrats who favor such a system. 
There is no point of difference of this sort between the 
two parties. There is but one single point of differ- 
ence between them, and that is the point mentioned. 
Whatever a Eepublican's opinions may be touching 
the tariff or the currency, yet he favors a strong central 
government. Whatever a Democrat's opinion may be 
upon either of these matters, yet he insists upon hold- 
ing the government down to the powers which a strict 
construction of the constitution will give to it. All 
Eepublicans are found upon one side of this proposi- 
tion, and all Democrats are found upon the other side 
of it J and for the past fifteen years the Democratic 
party has been making a great, perhaps a fatal, mis- 
take, in not forcing upon the country an acknowledg- 



60 

ment of this fact. With this as the point, and the 
only point, of difference between the two parties, it 
has, for the last fifteen years, permitted the Eepublican 
party to stand forth before the world arrogating to itself 
the claim that it is the party of law and order — that 
its aims are for the preservation of property and the 
protection of vested rights ; whilst their antagonists, 
the Democratic party, are a party of turbulence and 
disorder — a party made up of all the bankrui)t and 
discontented elements of the country, opposed to 
everything conservative, and allied to everything 
revolutionary. Not only has the Democratic party 
permitted the real point at issue to be ignored, but it 
has given only too much show of reason to the charges 
of its adversary. Wherever, in the Union, any ism 
has taken possession of the heads of crack-brained 
men, the Democratic party has sought to gather the 
disciples of this ism into its folds. It has eagerly 
sought the alliance of the green backer of Maine, the 
greenbacker of Indiana, the Kearney ite and sand-lotter 
of California, and the repudiator of Virginia. 

It has sought companionship with all these noxious 
social elements, and they have fastened themselves on 
it like barnacles on a ship, until it is hard to tell the 
Democratic ship from the corroding barnacles. The 
Democratic party will not deserve to administer the 
affairs of this government until it shall kick off from 
itself all these filthy barnacles — until it shall challenge 
the Eepublican party's claim that it is the party of law 
and order and preservation of x^roperty — until it shall 



61 



present Itself before the couutry as emphatically the 
party of law and order and property. When it shall 
do this; when it shall have spurned from itself every 
accessoi^ which would lift it into power through 
lunatic isms and rascally devices for theft; when it 
shall have done this, and forced its adversary to join 
m battle with it upon the question of whether the 
ancient theory of a government of limited powers 
shall be preserved, or whether it shall be overthrown 
and a government of unlimited powers be substituted 
in Its stead-then it may hope to come into the con- 
trol of this government. But it never will so come 
into con rol until it does this, and it will not deserve 
to rule this Union until it does this. 

The Eepublican party's theory of what the powers 

o the general government are and ought to be, is best 

Uustrated by considering the political cases decided 

of' 1880 ''P''^"*'''" Supreme Court in the spring 

In those cases, that court laid this down as the 
theory of our government under the amendments to 
the constitution adopted since the war. It held that 
the Congress of the United States was empowered by 
those amendments to enact any law that it thought 
necessary to secure to citizens the equal protection of 
the laws, and that it was the duty of the executive and 
judicial departments of the government to carry out 
and enforce any such laws as the Congress might enact, 
iwo of the particular cases in which the doctrine wag 
apphed were these: Congress had enacted a statute 



62 

providing substantially that in every criminal prose- 
cution or civil proceeding before a State court, if the 
defendant would make oath that he could not secure 
the enforcement in the State court of a right guaran- 
teed to him by the constitution or laws of the United 
States, his case should be removed for trial into the 
United States Court. A citizen of Virginia was in- 
dicted in a court of the State of Virginia for the crime 
of murder, which was a violation of the laws of Vir- 
ginia, but no violation of the laws of the United States. 
He made the affidavit prescribed by the statute, and 
had his case removed for trial into the Circuit Court of 
the United States. The State of Virginia resisted this. 
Now, it is obvious, if the removal could be sustained, 
that this was converting the courts of the United 
States into a machine for enforcing the laws of the 
State of Virginia, made for the prevention of crime. 
It was certainly converting the judicial department of 
the United States to uses that it was never intended 
for in its inception. Murder being no violation of any 
law of the United States, for the United States Court 
to take jurisdiction of the prosecution of a man charged 
with murder, was for it to take upon itself the duty of 
vindicating the oftended sovereignty of the State of 
Virginia, and of enforcing the laws of Virginia made 
to suppress that crime. 

The Supreme Court of the United States held that 
it was within the constitutional powers of Congress to 
enact such legislation if it was in its judgment neces- 
sary for securing to citizens the equal protection of the 
laws. 



63 



The second case was this: CoDgress had enacted 
substantially that if any State officer should adminis- 
ter his office in such a way as to deprive citizens of the 
equal protection of the laws, he should be liable to 
prosecution and punishment in the Circuit Court of the 
United States. 

A judge of one of the courts of the State of Virginia 
was indicted in the United States Court for depriving 
citizens of the equal protection of the laws, by system- 
atically omitting a certain class of citizens from his 
jury lists. He pleaded that being a judicial officer, 
vested with the exercise of a discretion, he could not 
be arraigned as for a criminal charge for executing the 
functions of his office as he best knew how, and that if 
he failed to give accused parties all their rights under 
the law, it was their duty to seek a reversal of his 
judgments through the ordinary processes of the law 
The Supreme Court, however, held the act to be within 
the constitutional powers of Congress. 

Now if, under the constitution of our government 
Congress is invested with these powers, it is idle to 
talk of its being a government of limited powers— the 
general government is one of as full and despotic pow- 
ers as any that has ever existed on the globe. If it be 
true that it has power to enact every law that is neces- 
sary to secure to citizens the equal protection of the 
laws, and if it be true that it is the sole and ex- 
clusive judge of what legislation is necessary for se- 
curing to citizens the equal protection of the laws, 
then there is practically nothing which the government 



64 

of the United States cannot accomplisTi. All talk of a 
government of limited powers is simply bosli, and we 
have a government clothed with as supreme powers as 
the most tyrannical despot could wish. Constitutional 
limitations are gone, and home rule and local self 
government are ended. Under the right of removal for 
trial, Congress may fill every State with its agents, 
placed there to carry out the will of Congress. How- 
ever heinous may be their crimes— however they shock ^ 
decency and violate the fundamental principles of the ' 
society where they may be— yet can Congress cover 
them with the panoply of a perfect immunity by pro- 
viding that if the community attempt to prosecute 
them for their crimes, their causes shall be removed 
for trial into the Federal courts. Not only this, but 
under the judge's case it may operate directly upon 
each citizen of each community. It may provide that 
if any citizen dare place himself in opposition to the 
will of Congress, he may be seized, carried off to 
another State, tried for a crime in a Federal court, and 
punished as the judge of that court may see fit. If 
Congress can act upon the case of a State judge in this 
manner, so can it act upon the governor of the State, 
the members of the legislature of the State, each other 
officer of the State, and indeed upon every citizen of 
the State. Nay, more ; if it have power to punish any 
officer of the State for executing a law which in its 
working deprives citizens of the equal protection of the 
laws, then in the plenitude of its powers it may act 
directly upon the law itself, and by its own act repeal 
that law. 



65 



With this as the theory of our government, what is 
the use of talking of our government being a complex 
government composed of States which have certain 
powers independently to themselves, over which the 
general government has no control, and a general gov- 
ernment invested with certain powers which the States 
cannot affect ? If this is the form of our government, 
then the States have no provinces reserved to them- 
selves. The general government has complete jurisdic- 
tion and power over all branches and departments of 
affairs. 

It should not be forgotten, that when the Supreme 
Court pronounced its opinion in these cases, that great 
jurist, Mr. Justice Stephen J. Field, seconded by 
Mr. Justice Clifford, dissented, and lifted his voice in 
an ever memorable protest against the doctrine of 
the court. 

The Democratic theory of the government of the 
United States is that it has no existence, save as it is 
created by the powers that the people of the United 
States have granted to it, and that those powers are 
clearly defined and limited in the constitution. The 
Democratic theory is an expression of the proposition 
that the more nearly government can be reduced to a 
system of home rule — local self-government, the more 
perfect the government is, and the greater the liberty 
and happiness of the citizen will be. It contends that 
the general government was never intended to have 
any voice in matters of a local nature. That its province 
was intended to be the custody of those matters which 



66 

are of general concern, such as peace and war, regula- 
tion of the currency, regulation of intercourse be- 
tween this country and foreign countries, and between 
the different States, regulation of weights and measures, 
and such other matters in which all the citizens of 
all the States are equally interested, and that those 
subjects over which it was intended that it should have 
control are specifically expressed in the constitution. 
Its proposition is that the general government has no 
concern except with those matters in which all the 
citizens of all the States are equally interested ; and 
that those matters in which each neighborhood is alone 
interested should be under the control of that neigh- 
borhood. Thus, as each citizen of the United States 
is equally interested in a uniform currency of fixed 
value, and as each citizen of the United States is 
equally interested in a uniform system of weights and 
measures, the general government ought to have con- 
trol over the currency and the system of weights and 
measures. The citizen of Texas is as much interested 
in these as the citizen of Massachusetts is, and the citi- 
zen of Massachusetts is as much interested in them as 
the citizen of Texas is. But the citizen of Massachu- 
setts is not especially interested in the terms and con- 
ditions upon which real estate may be passed from one 
person to another in Texas ; nor is the citizen of Texas 
interested in the regulations that may be prescribed 
for selling eggs and butter in Massachusetts. These 
are matters of local concern over which each community 
ought to have exclusive control. So the preservation 



I 



67 



of order in each community (and under this head it 
is intended to include all measures for the prevention 
and punishment of all crimes save those that are viola- 
tions of some one of the enumerated powers of the 
general government) is also properly a matter of local 
self-government, of which each community should 
have exclusive control. 

Now, let us consider some of the reasons for each one 
of these two theories. 

The Republican party claims that there is a constant 
and unending conflict in progress between the negroes 
and the white people of the Southern States, and that 
it is necessary that the general government should 
have power to interfere in that conflict to protect the 
negro, otherwise the white man will make him the vic- 
tim of the most diabolical oppression. This I believe 
to be the entire reason why the Republican party de- 
mands that the government shall have power to inter- 
fere in the local affairs of the States. Certainly no 
persons of any party ever demanded powers of this 
sort for the general government until the demand was 
asserted that the negro should be taken under the pro- 
tecting wing of the government. The preceding por- 
tion of this essay was devoted to showing that no con- 
test between the races exists when they are let alone ; 
therefore, if the Republican proposition were not one 
vicious in itself, still no occasion has arisen for resort- 
ing to it. The strongest statement of the reasons why 
the Republican proposition is one vicious in itself, is a 
statement of the reasons for the proposition of the 
Democratic party. 



68 



The beginnings of all governments of which we have 
any account, save that of this Union, have been more 
or less despotic. All the world was at one time more 
or less barbarous, and amongst barbarians, govern- 
ment means simply power. He who is endowed with 
sufficient power to subdue others around him to the 
execution of his will, founds the government which is 
exercised over his neighbors. In the commencement, 
therefore, this government is nothing but the expres- 
sion of the will of this ruler. In all governments of 
which we have any account there has been always 
a constant, never ending struggle between the citizens 
upon the one hand and the government upon the 
other. Upon the part of the citizen the effort has 
been to curb the powers of the government— to hedge 
it around with fences and safeguards for his own 
rights of person and property — to erect dams and bul- 
warks between his personal rights and the govern- 
ment's powers. Upon the part of the government the 
effort has been to retain as much power over tlie citi- 
zen's person and property as it can. The history of 
every nation is nothing but the story of this contest. 
Every people has its landmarks along the progress of 
the strife. In the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
some of the most glorious deeds that illustrate the 
annals of man are monuments to victories achieved by 
the people over the crown. Magna Gharta, the Petition 
of Eight, the great Eebellion, the habeas corjnis act, 
the revolution of 1688 — all of these are mere eras in 
the history of this great battle. 



(I 

!! 



69 

At the time when the American colonies threw oft 
their allegiance to the Crown of England, government- 
al science was in its palmiest days. In the period 
between it and the Reformation the profoundest minds 
of the world had been constantly occupied in its con- 
sideration. The thinkers of this country had been no 
less engaged with it than the thinkers of Europe, and 
the conclusion had been reached that the only province 
of government was to take care of those matters of a 
general nature in which all are concerned, leaving 
matters of a local nature to be cared for as far as pos- 
sible by local methods. 

The bottom reason for this, being the true proposi- 
tion of governmental science, is that each and every in- 
dividual has a natural and an inherent right to abso- 
lute liberty of thought and equally to absolute liberty 
of action, save and except that he must not use his 
liberty of action so as to trespass upon a right of an- 
other person. Now, authority over the individual has 
a right to restrain his action whenever that action 
amounts to a trespass upon another's rights ; but when 
it restrains his liberty of action in what would not be 
a trespass upon another's rights, it is unjust, and is 
neither more nor less than tyranny. Naturally those 
who are nearest to the person who complains that the 
particular act of an individual injures him, are better 
able to judge of the merits of the controversy than 
those at a distance. It therefore follows, that the more 
narrow the focus of local government is made, so that 
it be wide enough to accomplish the ends of govern- 



70 

ment, the less likely tlie citizen is to have his natural 
and inherent right to freedom of action unjustly cir- 
cumscribed. 

Those Americans who framed the constitution of 
our government had these principles deeply instilled 
into their minds, and they determined to frame the 
government with a strict regard to them. They de- 
termined to grant to it control over all those matters, 
in which all the citizens of all parts of the country had 
an equal interest, but they determined to withhold 
from it power to interfere in matters in which only the 
people of the neighborhood were interested. The gov- 
ernment which they framed was the perfection of 
human reason, and in its practical operation it secured 
the very largest liberty and happiness to the citizen. 
It was only wheu the Kepublican party insisted upon 
its overthrow, and upon the introduction of the propo- 
sition, that the general government should be endow- 
ed with power to thrust its interfering hand into all 
matters of a local nature, at its pleasure, that the har- 
mony of the system has been turned into discord. 
From the day that proposition was affirmed to be a 
j)art of the theory of our government, our Eden has 
been turned into Eden after the introduction of sin. 

Prior to the war between the sections, no sane man 
would have claimed that the government of the United 
States had any power whatever to interfere with the 
local affairs of any community. It is only since the 
war that the claim has been asserted for it, and that 
claim is based upon the fourteenth amendment to the 



71 

Constitution of the United States, which was proposed 
in Congress, in 1866, and declared to be adopted as a 
part of the constitution in 1868, and it is upon the fol- 
lowing provisions of that amendment, '^ No State shall 
make or enforce any law which shall abridge the priv- 
ileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, 
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty 
or proi)erty, without due process of law ; nor deny to 
any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection 
of the laws. 

^^ Congress shall have power to enforce the provisions 
of this amendment by appropriate legislation." 

It is claimed that the entire theory of the govern- 
ment was overthrown, and a new theory adopted, when 
this amendment was incorporated as a part of the con- 
stitution. I do not believe that the people of the United 
States would ever have permitted it to become a part 
of their constitution, if they had understood that such 
momentous consequences were to be claimed from its 
adoption. Had they understood it, their answer, like 
that of the English Barons of old, would have been, 
^' Kolumus leges Americce mutare." 

The people of New York never would have agreed 
that the Congress of the United States might enact a 
law providing that, upon the complaint of a citizen of 
Texas, a citizen of the interior of the State of New 
York might be seized by a United States marshal, 
hauled off to Texas and tried there, away from friends 
and witnesses, before a United States judge, and 
locked up forever in a Texas penitentiary. Yet, just 



72 

this the Eepublican party claims that the fourteenth 
amendment has empowered OougTess to do, and just 
this claim the Eepublican Supreme Court sustains. 

It is useless to deny that the decisions that the court 
made go this length. It is idle to say that they do 
not authorize Congress to have a citizen dragged out 
of his own State into another for trial. The court ex- 
pressly announces the proposition, that the methods 
for securing to citizens the equal protection of the laws 
are left to Congress, and if it had not announced the 
proposition, it inevitably flowed from the decision that 
they made. Its decision was, that Congress might 
l^rovide that a citizen of New York, charged with hav- 
ing committed a crime in an extreme eastern county 
of the State of New York, might be hauled off for 
trial before a United States court, sitting in an ex- 
treme western county of the State, ^ow, there is no 
obligation resting upon Congress, to have a United 
States court for New York. It may i^rovide that the 
business proper, for a United States court, arising in 
the State of New York, may be transacted in a United 
States court held in Pennsylvania. So that it may 
be provided that the New Yorker, charged with hav- 
ing committed a crime in the extreme eastern part of 
the State of New York, may be summoned for trial 
before the United States court in Pennsylvania. And 
if it may be provided that he can be carried there, he 
may then be equally carried to Texas. 

The inconsistency of the Supreme Court in its con- 
struction of this amendment, is utterly incomprehensi- 



73 

ble to plain men. It first came before it for construc- 
tion in the famous Slaughter House cases, reported in 
16th Wallace. In that case the material facts were 
these: The carpet bag legislature of Louisiana had es- 
tablished one of the most odious monopolies that ever 
disgraced the statute book of any people. It had given 
sixteen men the exclusive right of slaughtering all 
animals used for food in the parishes of Orleans, Jef- 
ferson and St. Bernard, containing 1,154 square miles, 
and between two and three hundred thousand people 
— containing the City of Orleans. It practically took 
away from the butchers of New Orleans, of whom 
there were more than a thousand, their means of liveli- 
hood, and left them and their families to subsist as 
best they could under the tribute that they were forced 
to pay these sixteen monopolists. How much was paid 
this legislature to x^ass this law I know not. The 
butchers at once attacked the act in the courts of 
Louisiana as forbidden by the clause of the Fourteenth 
Amendment quoted, because it abridged the privileges 
and immunities of citizens of the United States, and 
deprived them of the equal protection of the laws. 
The Louisiana courts being composed of judges that 
were a part of the same carpet bag government, 
decided against them, and they carried their case to 
the Supreme Court of the United States. And what 
will the unlearned reader, who has informed himself 
of what that court held the Fourteenth Amendment 
to mean, in the cases that I have been remarking on, 
think that it held in this butchers' case "? It held that 

4 



74 

the Louisiana law did not deprive citizens of the equal 
protection of the laws, and that the only privileges 
and immunities of citizens that it was intended by it 
to protect were those privileges and immunities that a 
citizen has in virtue of his character as a citizen of the 
United States — such as the right to petition Congress, 
the right to protection on the high seas, and the right 
to travel from one State to another. But that all the 
ordinary matters of personal right — those fundamental 
matters of citizenship, without which human liberty 
cannot exist — were left by the amendment outside the 
I)ale of its protection. To his eternal honor be it said, 
that, though a Democrat of the strictest sect, Mr. 
Justice Stephen J. Field protested against this emas- 
culation of the amendment. This decision was made 
in 1872, when General Grant and the Eepublican 
party were administering the government pretty much 
to suit themselves, and without the slightest regard to 
the constitution, so that many persons will feel dis- 
l)osed to symi^athize with the court in its endeavor to 
curb the powers of the government. But if this odious 
destruction of the very existence of citizens was not 
forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment, because to 
hold so would have been to make an unwarrantable 
invasion into the scope of the State government, how 
is it to be said that securing to citizens the equal pro- 
tection of the laws authorizes Congress to absolutely 
destroy all State governments ? The substance of the 
recent decisions was that Congress might do what it 
thought proper to secure to citizens the equal protec- 



75 



tion of the laws when they were being denied them. 
But if this were true, was not the Supreme Court 
bound to destroy any State law which was palpably 
denying to citizens equal protection of the laws ? 

Since such radical results have been worked by 
incorporating this amendment into the constitution, 
I may be pardoned for giving the history of its adop- 
tion. 

In 1868, when it was proclaimed to have been 
adopted, the Union consisted of tbirty-seven States. 
The constitution requires the assent of three fourths 
of the States of the Union to an amendment before it 
can become a part. of that instrument. On the 21st 
of July, 1868, Congress passed a joint resolution, de- 
claring that three fourths of the States having ratified 
the amendment, it had become a part of the constitu- 
tion; and on the 28th of July the Secretary of State 
made public proclamation to the same effect. The 
Union consisted of thirty-seven States at that time, 
Colorado having been admitted since; and twenty- 
seven and three quarters being three fourths of thirty- 
seven, it consequently required the assent of twenty- 
eight States to make the amendment a part of the 
constitution. When it was submitted to the legisla- 
tures of the States, the following voted for its adop- 
tion, to wit: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, 
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mas- 
sachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, 
Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, 
Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Ehode Island, Tennessee, 



76 

Yerinont and West Virginia. These, all told, amounted 
to only twentj-six, two less than enough to adopt it. 
But almost as soon as the States of New Jersey and Ohio 
voted to ratify it, they rescinded their votes, and that 
long before enough of the other States had ratified it 
to make three fourths of all, so that they are properly 
to be put down as States voting against it. The 
States that voted to reject it were New Jersey, Ohio, 
Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, Georgia, North Caro- 
lina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. The States 
of California, Wisconsin and Mississippi took no action 
upon it, and are, therefore, to be considered as voting 
to reject it. The count, therefore, stood twenty-four 
States voting to ratify the amendment and thirteen 
voting to reject it. On this count, therefore, it was lost 
for want of the votes of four States. 

In this condition of affairs. Congress passed an act 
which provided that the so called "Rebel" States 
should be parcelled out into five military districts, 
with an army officer not below the rank of brigadier 
general to command each district. The act made this 
officer supreme dictator in his district. All the laws of 
each State in his district were subject to his will, and 
might be repealed by his order. He was empowered 
to authorize the local tribunals to sit and try civil 
causes and persons accused of crime; but he might, 
in his discretion, supersede these tribunals in either 
case, and substitute military commissions for them. 
The only limitation upon the power of this officer was 
a provision that he was not to inflict capital punish- 



77 

ment without the sanction of the President. It is hard 
to contemplate the provisions of this act, at this distant 
day, without a shudder. It placed the liberties, and 
the fortunes, and the lives, to a certain extent, of all 
the citizens of the Southern States, absolutely under 
the whims and caprices of a military satrap. 

This act contained a further provision, that when 
any one of the States affected by it should have rati- 
fied the Fourteenth Amendment, that State should 
become entitled to a representation in Congress, and 
the provisions of the act should no longer be applicable 
to it. It is not difficult to imagine that these States 
would have hastened to ratify this amendment, or to 
do things far more serious than that to escape from the 
situation in which this law placed them. Accordingly, 
the States of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, 
Texas and Virginia reversed the action which their 
legislatures had previously taken upon it, and ratified 
the amendment. This made twenty-nine States vot- 
ing to adopt it, against eight voting against its adop- 
tion. In this way the Fourteenth Amendment, which 
is held to have worked a complete overthrow of our 
institutions and a complete revolution in the theory of 
our government, was incorporated into the constitu- 
tion of the United States. If that amendment were 
not in the constitution of the United States, no living 
man would claim that Congress has any power to 
meddle in the local affairs of a State ; and yet it is in 
the constitution by the proceedings that have been 
detailed. 



78 

I venture the assertion that no such radical change 
as this was ever worked in the institutions of any 
people with the semblance of a constitutional govern- 
ment, by such means. 

It might be well for the people of the North to pon- 
der on this state of facts. If the constitution may be 
amended by such proceedhigs as these, the poisoned 
chalice may be commended to their own lips. Massa- 
chusetts and New York might be converted into Mili- 
tary District No. 1, and held thus until they gave their 
approval to a constitutional amendment abandoning 
their just weight in the federal government. 

Now, notwithstanding all I have said, I am yet a 
friend to the Fourteenth Amendment, if only one of 
its provisions were stricken from it, to wit : Its fifth 
section, which gives to Congress power to enforce its 
provisions by appropriate legislation. There has been 
no grander declaration of human rights since Magna 
Oharta than the first section of the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment. Previous to the time of its adoption, there was 
no definition of citizenship of the United States — in- 
deed, some of the foremost statesmen that the Union 
had ever had, had denied that there could be a citizen- 
ship of the United States further than that citizenship 
inhered in the individual by reason of his citizenship 
of his State. This was an evil which ought to have 
been cured. No one, therefore, can object to the pro- 
vision which defines what shall constitute citizenship 
of the Union. It is right that the States should be in- 
hibited to abridge those privileges and immunities of 



79 



a citizen which are fundamental, and without which 
true libert}^ cannot exist. No State or other authority 
ought to be permitted to deny to any person the equal 
protection of the laws, nor ought any person to be de- 
prived of life, liberty, or property, withont due process 
of law. As general propositions of great value, no 
sensible i)erson could be found who would dispute 
these; and most, if not all, enlightened Democrats 
would admit themselves glad to see these provisions 
in the constitution of the United States if they stood 
there simply as provisions prohibitory upon the power 
of the States, without the fifth clause empowering 
Congress to enforce them by such legislation as it 
might think proper. The constitution, as it came 
from the hands of its framers, contained numerous 
provisions prohibiting certain classes of legislation to 
the States, such as the prohibition of laws impairing 
the obligation of contracts, the granting of titles or 
nobility, the making of bills of credit, etc. Yet it 
gave Congress no legislative i)ower over these subjects 
in case the States should legislate in defiance of the 
constitutional prohibitions. The federal judiciary 
was provided as the guard to the constitution, and 
given power to annul and undo whatever the States 
should attempt to do in opposition to its mandates. 

From the beginning of the government down to the 
period when the late civil war terminated, this instru- 
mentality was found abundant for the preservation of 
the constitution, and for holding State legislation with- 
in the limits assigned to it. 



80 

Now, if tlie provisions of the first section of the 
Fourteenth Amendment simply forbade State govern- 
ments to do the things specified there, and left it to 
the federal judiciary to annul and destroy any action 
of the State governments which was in defiance of 
those i)ro visions, few, if any persons, could be found 
to quarrel with that amendment. Every good which 
could possibly flow from it would be secured to the 
citizen, and the theory of our government of a Eepub- 
lic of States would still be preserved. But the Eepub- 
lican theory will demand more. It will not be content 
with a xilan which makes void whatever is attempted 
in contravention of the constitution. It will have 
Congress empowered to legislate and enforce its legis- 
lation whenever a blind and ignorant majority of i)ar- 
tisans may think, in their crude considerations of the 
nature of government, a case has arisen for central in- 
terference with local administration of afi:airs. This is 
neither more nor less than despotism. It is a central 
government without limitations upon its powers, which 
completely fulfils the idea of despotism. 

Kecently, ray eye fell upon the following admirable 
letter, written by General Bradley T. Johnson, of the 
Baltimore (Md.) bar, to the editor of the Dubuque 
(Iowa) Herald, It is full of such sound common sense 
and i^ractical statesmanship in its views touching the 
Southern question, that I print it here in full. Colonel 
D. B. Henderson had made a speech in Iowa, in which 
he said what follows here j and the editor of the Herald 
had -inclosed it to General Johnson to know if he was 
correctly reported. The extract and the letter follow : 



81 

Extract from a speech of Col. B. B. Henderson, at Waterloo, August 11, 1880. 

" In this connection, although I do not desire to tell stories, I will 
relate an incident which happened when I was down in Washington 
during the trial of the Washburne-Donnelly case. I was introduced to 
Gen. Johnson, of Baltimore, who was there defending Donnelly. He 
was a Confederate general of note, and has become an eminent lawyer. 
Said I to him, ' General, what will be the outcome of the Southern 
question ? Will the negroes and white Republicans be allowed to 
vote ?' Said he, ' I will be frank with you, for it is time there was 
a better understanding between us. I tell you that we intend to 
give the negro his personal, property and educational rights, but not 
his political rights. I asked what his personal rights meant, and he 
said he referred to his family relations. I said, ' In States where the 
negroes are in a majority, what will you do ?' ' We can't allow them 
to vote.' 'But suppose they demand it?' *We can't help it; they 
can't vote.' He then proceeded to discuss the question with me, and 
added, ' We have made up our minds, and we might as well under- 
stand each other. The negroes in the South cannot exercise their 
political rights.' I then said to him that the book I had been reading 
— Judge Tourgee's ' Fool's Errand' — was true then. He said, while 
not admitting the philosophy of it, the statements were true to the 
letter. That, my friends, is the position of the Democratic party in the 
South to-day. It is only another mode of accomplishing in peace what 
they failed to accomplish by war." 

" To the Editor of the Dubuque Herald. 

" White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, August 28. 
" Dear Sir : Your letter of the 17th was forwarded to me here. You 
inclose what purports to be a report of a speech said to have been 
made by Col. D. B. Henderson, in which Col. Henderson is said to 
have stated that I told him in a conversation in Washington, last 
spring, that ' We intend to give the negro his personal, property and 
educational rights, but not his political rights,' and you ask me to 
state if his statement is correct. Assuming that Col. Henderson is 
correctly reported, I have to say that he misunderstood and misapplied 

4* 



82 



the conversation I then had with him. I am not surprised at this, for 
the ideas I then suggested were evidently new to him, and in the inter- 
view between us, lasting only a short time, it could not be expected 
that a perfect stranger could at once take in and apply the suggestions 
then made to him by a person unknown to him before, when these 
suggestions were made from a standpoint entirely novel and unex- 
pected. I recollect the scope and purpose of our conversation per- 
fectly. Col. Henderson was an intelligent Republican from an extreme 
Western State, and I thought I could really be of service by imparting 
t) him what 1 believe to be the heartfelt purposes of our Southern ex- 
Confoderate people. I said that the question with us in the South was 
a social, fundamental question, not at all connected with temporary 
partisan issues which interest the other States. Social order, civiliza- 
tion, property, education and progress were all involved in our political 
action. The framework of our society had been shattered from turret 
to base, and political power thrust into the hands of those inexperi- 
enced and incompetent to use it, and we were required to solve the 
problem whether society could exist when all the power of government 
was wielded by the ignorant, the uneducated and the inexperienced 
members of it. I said the forces that control a State are virtue, intel- 
ligence, property and manhood, and that no device could be invented, 
no constitutional amendment nor congressional enactment be applied, 
which could change this order of nature. 

" When society is left to itself, uncontrolled by exterior force, these 
vital forces will direct and govern it. Therefore, I said the negro 
could not control any portion of the Southern States. The whites 
would govern these States always and under all circumstances, not be- 
cause they are white, but because they possess those attributes which 
the other race is deficient in. I said we, the whites, would secure the 
negro all his rights of person and of property: ive wo\\]d insure his 
education and development; we would protect him from his own ignor- 
ance and inexperience. Left alone, he had proved himself incapable of 
standing unsupported. But I said, under all circumstances, we will re- 
tain the control of society in the hands of the whites, because all the 
forces of society inhere in and pertain to the whites. I said numerical 



83 



majorities of blacks in localities will not prevent this. ^Power goes to 
the hands that can use it, and mere numerical power never has con- 
trolled and never will control society. Women and children make up 
the large majority, but power is in the hands of the minority of adult 
men. Where the blacks have numerical majorities means will be found 
to control them. Limitations of the franchise by property or educa- 
tional tests, or by capitation taxes, or by divisions geographical, will 
be applied, and thus the political power of negro majorities will be 
destroyed or neutralized. I can well understand how Col. Henderson 
could have misapplied my remarks. I was talking of the inherent, 
irresistible forces which control society, above constitutions, laws or 
political arrangements. He was thinking of the mere voting, and the 
devices resorted to, by which these forces may best govern it. I now 
repeat, that under no circumstances will any American State, whether 
it be Iowa or South Carolina, of its own free will, permit itself to be 
governed by the ignorant, incompetent and inexperienced classes 
within it. If some future exodus should flood your fair State with 
Southern negroes or Eastern Chinese, the Republican and Democratic 
parties of Iowa would shrivel up like parchment in the fire. They 
would cease to be, and every white man in Iowa would unite in an 
earnest efibrt to preserve the civilization, the society and the moral 
tone of that social organization which has placed her among the fore- 
most of the j^merican commonwealths. 

" Allow me to make a further remark. If the Northern Republicans 
could be got to understand and appreciate the real difficulties of the 
Southern question, and the real sentiments and aspirations of the 
Southern people, we could undoubtedly all be enabled to turn our at- 
tention to the discussion and development of great propositions which 
confront us all alike, and on which the future happiuess and prosperity 
of all alike depend. I ask them, put yourselves in our place; we are 
opposed to secession ; we are for an indissoluble union ; we will never 
consent to slavery in any form, direct or indirect. Now, these things 
granted, put yourselves in our place, with a class among you, some- 
times outnumbering you, always formidable in numbers, on whom po- 
litical power has been forced without preparation or fitness — would you 



84 



not do precisely as we are doing, and would not the white people of 
Iowa retain their control over their schools, their taxes, their courts, 
their county and State governments ? "Would not their wit, their in- 
telligence, their power of organization, more than counterbalance mere 
numbers ? I take it that the anti-Chinese plank of the Chicago plat- 
form, for which, doubtless. Col, Henderson voted, is a public confession 
by the Republican party, that its dogma of race equality is false, and a 
public retraction of all its old errors .on that article of its faith. No 
man can assert that the Chinaman, with his four thousand years of 
civilization, is not more fit for the duties of American citizenship than 
the Southern negro. I assert that the South is as thoroughly union 
and anti-slavery, to-day, as Iowa or New England. Emancipation has 
brought to her material development, of which you now only see the 
dawn. The largest crop of slave-grown cotton was five million bales ; 
this year our crop will be six and a quarter millions. The cost of cot- 
ton to the Massachusetts manufacturer is 18 per cent, greater than to 
the South Carolina or Grcorgia manufacturer. This difference in prime 
cost has quadrupled the factories in the South, while New England 
languishes, and the spindles of Lowell and Fall River are even now in 
movement to Columbia and Augusta. Some of the States and many of 
our cities exempt manufacturers from taxation for terms of years, and 
the next census will show results which you would now deem in- 
credible. 

"The late Confederate States are larger by 100,000 square miles 
than all the free States east of the Rocky Mountains, and there is more 
public land subject- to entry in many of them than in any of your 
Western States. Florida is as large as New York, New Jersey and 
Connecticut. Texas is as large as all New England, New York, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. We are trying to settle these great 
States ; to develop their imperial resources ; we have climate, area and 
a productive soil. We want men and money, population and capital. 
To get them we require peace and order. We can secure them only in 
the Union and of the Union. Its power, its prestige, its boundless re- 
sources are ten times more necessary for us than for the opulent and 
populous States. Therefore, we are resolved to support and maintain 



85 



the Union forever, under every contingency, against all attacks, 
whether from within or without. Our policy is peace and union. 
They are the necessities of our being and progress. Our aspirations 
are for railroads, telegraphs, printing presses and school houses. They 
are toward commerce and trade, the arts, the sciences and literature. 
p]very energy and all our thoughts will be directed for several genera- 
tions toward development, material and intellectual, toward progress 
and a higher culture under one government with free and liberal in- 
stitutions. We will maintain the constitution and all its amendments, 
because we intend that all parts of the country shall be open to all 
American citizens with equality of rights, and that no future party 
shall arise to prohibit negro emigration to any State, as the Republican 
party has Just prohibited Chinese emigration to all the States. We do 
not intend to have the blacks cooped up and fenced in the States 
where ihey now congregate. Our policy extends far beyond the mere 
temporary partisan issues. There is no South and North, there may 
hereafter be an East and West. But when the farmer of the great 
West gets to understand that down the Mississippi valley lie lands 
which may be had for the asking, whose fertility is such, that a la- 
borer in agriculture can produce from six hundred to a thousand dollars 
per capita, net, per annum, you will see such a movement of population 
that in the next ten years will work miracles. As this movement of 
free institutions and free labor goes on, the world will witness the de- 
velopment of a great people and a great empire. 

" The commerce of the world lies within our grasp. Mexico, South 
America, the new found continent of Africa, all require our products of 
cotton and tobacco, of our mines and our great factories. The Amer- 
ican flag now is as unknown in these seas as that of the republic of 
San Marino. Norwegian ships come up the James River and carry 
ofE Virginia freights. Italian vessels, Dutch skippers and Enghsh 
steamers engross the trade of Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans. 
The policy and laws of the government for the last twenty years have 
destroyed the American mercantile marine. We will repeal the laws 
which have produced these results. We will purchase ships on the 
Clyde or the Delaware, or wherever we can buy them best, and we will 



86 



carry on our own commerce in our own ships, under our own flag, and 
that flag shall be the stars and stripes. I have taken some space to 
answer your simple inquiry, but I have tried, in doing so, to put in a 
clear light, the real questions which interest you and us. I have tried 
to show that we have a deeper, wider, larger interest than you, in 
maintaining the Union with the constitution as amended; that our 
necessity for peace and union is greater than yours, and that we are 
intent on preserving the one and maintaining the other. When we get 
this understood we can unite in the examination of economical prob- 
lems and of systems of taxation and finance, of policies of commerce, 
and of social laws, and remit the consideration of the rebels and the 
ku-klux to those who go on ' fools' errands,' and then vex the public 
by their clatter in telling about them. 

"Yours respectfully, 

"Bradley T. Johnson." 



ADDENDUM. 



In October, 1880, the New York Sun called attention 
to the report of the " Frauds CommissioD/' and invoked 
Mr. Tourgee's attention to it. \^ hilst this work was 
goiug through the press, my attention was called to a 
letter from A. W. Tourgee to the New York 8un^ in the 
columns of that journal for December 9, in which he 
gives an explanation of his connection with these mat- 
ters. I will allow him to state that explanation here 
in his own words. In his letter to the Sun he says : 

" Mr. Svvepson says that he paid these sums to me at the request of 
Mr. Littlefield. I know nothing of any arrangement between them or 
of the fund to which it is charged, except what there appears. The 
following are the facts in relation to the two sums named: 

"In the spring of 1868, as one of the secretaries of the Republican 
State Committee, I was directed by Mr. Swepson to draw on him for a 
certain sum for campaign expenses. Accordingly, some time early in 
April, the election being on the 20th of that month, having need of 
that sum to pay the expenses of certain speakers, I drew on Mr, Swep- 
son for $200. This draft was protested. I did not learn of the protest 
until some time afterward, and then wrote to Mr. Swepson in regard 
to it, and it was paid. I have no idea why it was charged to Little- 
field, as I never had any communication with him in regard to the 
matter, and did not know that ho had any knowledge of it until I read 
the testimony of Mr. Swepson. 

"The second was in thiswise: In June or July, 1869, I learned 
that a piece of property I was very anxious to have would be sold for 



88 



cash. Not having the money, I went to the owner, Mr. J. A. G-ray, 
a prominent banker and active Democrat of Greensboro, N. C, where 
I have resided ever since the war, and obtained the refusal of the 
property for a few days, telling him that I would try to borrow the 
money from Mr. Swepson. Mr. Swepson had been my first client after 
going to North Carolina, and I had had some other business relations 
with him before my election to the bench in the spring of 1868. He 
had once intimated that he would lend me the money to buy this prop- 
erty. I went to Raleigh, and there learned that Mr. Swepson was in 
New York. Happening to see Mr. Littlefield, I mentioned my disap- 
pointment and my fear that I would lose the property. He at once 
said he would arrange it for me. He, therefore, took my notes, pay- 
able semi-annually, in alternate sums of $400 and $600, to meet my 
prospective means of payment, with interest at 8 per cent., and 'gave 
me a sight draft on Mr. Swepson for the amount required, $3,500. He 
said he had no doubt that Mr. Swepson would be willing to lend me the 
money, and he would indorse the notes to him. I told him I would 
secure them by mortgage on the property. Accordingly the notes 
were not stamped, but marked according to the law as it then was : 
' To be secured by mortgage of real estate duly stamped.' Mr. Little- 
field said he would let me know in whose favor Swepson desired the 
mortgage to be drawn. As the notes were negotiable and the check 
was not money, a memorandum of the transaction was made and 
signed and witnessed by a gentleman who was present. It is still in 
my possession. I returned to Greensboro, assigned Littlefield's draft 
on Swepson to Mr. Gray, directed the deed to be made out, and went 
off on my circuit. On my return Mr. Gray told me the draft had been 
protested. 1 wrote to Littlefield for the return of my notes. The re- 
ply was a note from Swepson to send on the draft, which was done, 
and he paid it, also the protest fees. Some time afterward I saw Mr. 
Littlefield, and told him I was ready to execute the mortgage. He 
said that Swepson had refused to loan the money on such long time, 
and he had been compelled to arrange for the payment of the draft 
himself, but he hoped Swepson would take the notes when they came 

These 



89 



notes were given in good faith, and I considered them hona fide debts. 
The transaction was an open one, known to a dozen or more parties, 
and made without any attempt at concealment. 

" I was afterward served with a garnishment by creditors of Little- 
field, suing in the Superior Court of Wake County, and made answer 
admitting the indebtedness, which I had never denied or concealed. 
Pending this htigation came the commercial panic of 1873. ' Being 
largely engaged in manufacturing, I was caught short, and, to secure my 
creditors, mortgaged all my property, which was insufficient to meet the 
liabilities of my business. In consequence of this, I suppose, the gar- 
nishment was not pressed. Some years afterward, when their collec- 
tion had been barred by limitations, the notes were surrendered to me 
by Mr, Swepson." 

Upon this the Sun made the following delicious com- 
ments in its editorial columns : 

" His explanation of the second entry, $3,502.55, is less simple. 
An alleged business transaction of rather complicated nature is 
involved. Mr. Tourgee's narrative of the alleged facts must be care- 
fully perused in order to understand the defence at all. To the best 
of our comprehension, it is admitted by Mr. Tourgee that he received 
$3,500 which ultimately came from Swepson, through Littlefield's 
friendly offices ; and that this alleged loan was never repaid by him- 
self. 

" The objection that will probably be made to both of these ex- 
planations, as answers to the charge, is that much more roundabout 
methods have before this been used by clever men to cover corrupt 
dealings. If Mr. Tourgee were able to show that he ever, in any 
form, repaid the alleged loan of $3,500, the case would be different. 

" On the other hand, the theory of Mr. Tourgee's innocence of 
wrong doing is not wholly inconsistent with the proved facts. We are 
glad to put special emphasis on this point. To make the theory of 
innocence accord with the admitted facts, however, it is necessary to 
allow for a series of coincidences of an extraordinary character. Mr. 
Tourgee wants to borrow money to buy some land. He thinks of 



90 



applying to Mr. Swepson, who happened to be his political and per- 
sonal friend. Mr. Swepson happens at this time to be spending 
hundreds of thousands of dollars for the purchase of politicians. 
Mr. Tourgee happens to mention his desire to Mr. Littlefield, a 
notorious and professional corruptionist, who happens to be Mr. 
Swepson's agent in the purchase of State officials. Mr. Littlefield 
happens to be in a mood which leads him to undertake to arrange Mr. 
Tourgee's business with Mr. Tourgee's personal friend Swepson. Mr. 
Tourgee happens to be undergoing a phase of folly which inclines him 
to accept the offer of this notorious person. Between Swepson and 
Littlefield the money is found for Mr. Tourgee, who profits by it. 
Business embarrassments happen, which prevent Mr. Tourgee from 
repaying tlie obligation. And finally, through the most unfortunate 
of a long train of unfortunate circumstances, the transaction, by an 
unaccountable mistake, gets recorded in the private corruption account 
kept between Swepson and Littlefield." 

But the transaction will bear even closer inspection 
than the Sun has given it. 

The substance of it is this: Tourgee, wanting $3,500, 
mentions that fact casually to Littlefield. Littlefield 
says, he shall have the money ; that he (Littlefield) 
will draw a draft for the amount on Swepson. Tourgee 
says, if you will, I will give my notes for it, which I 
will secure by a deed of trust on the property that I 
am going to pay for with it. All right, says Littlefield, 
and he draws his draft on Swepson for $3,500, payable 
to the order of Tourgee, and Tourgee takes this draft 
and gives it to Gray in i)ayment for the property. 
The draft comes back x^rotested. Tourgee reports that 
fact to Littlefield, and Littlefield answers with a note 
from Swepson, directing the draft to be forwarded, 
which is done, and he pays it. Some time afterwards 



91 

Tourgee meets Littlefield, and tells him he is ready to 
execute that deed to secure Swepson payment of the 
notes which he supposed Littlefield had transferred to 
him, whereupon Littlefield tells him that Swepson would 
not take the notes, and that he, Littlefield, had been 
compelled to raise the money for him, and that the 
debt is due by Tourgee to himself. Further discussion 
as to securing the debt by a deed of trust seems to 
have been abandoned, Littlefield being content to 
waive that, and being satisfied with Tourgee's personal 
obligation. In time Littlefield fails and Tourgee fails, 
and by some process left wholly unexplained, Little- 
field transfers Tourgee's notes to Swepson. When we 
next hear of the notes they are brought by Swepson to 
Tourgee and surrendered to him without consideration. 
Now, the first inquiry that naturally strikes the 
mind is, why should Littlefield, upon whom Tourgee 
had no claims, have volunteered to draw his draft for 
Tourgee's benefit, for so large a sum as $3,500 *? A 
letter to Swepson, urging him to let Tourgee have the 
money, would have done all that a draft could do. 
Why should he have thus become Tourgee's indorser? 
Secondly, if he were going to do so disinterested a 
thing, as we are bound on Tourgee's statement to be- 
lieve that he did, why should he have drawn his draft 
on a person in whose hands he had no funds? Swep- 
son's refusal to pay the draft was proof that Little- 
field had no funds in his hands. And third, as he was 
going to do so liberal and disinterested a thing, why, 
of all men in the world, should he have selected Swep- 



92 

son, with whom he had his corrupt bargain for brib- 
ing the legislature, as the man to draw on"? The next 
thing that arrests attention is this, why should Little- 
field have been " compelled to arrange for the payment 
of the draft himself f^ Tourgee had no claims of any 
sort whatever on Littlefield. Littlefield had simply 
volunteered out of pure and simple friendship, to help 
him forward in getting a loan from Swepson. When 
the draft came back protested, Littlefield's course was 
to say to Tourgee, " Well, old fellow, I've done all I 
could to enable you to get a loan from Swepson, but it 
seems that he won't lend. I'm sorry for you ; you must 
arrange the matter with Gray." He was not " com- 
pelled" to make any arrangements to take the draft up, 
unless Gray demanded it, and it is not averred that he 
did. No money had been obtained on it; it had sim- 
ply been assigned to Gray to be payment for his prop- 
erty, in case Swepson honored it; to be nothing in case 
he did not. Gray, in the meantime, held on to his 
property, so that he was not damaged by Swepson's 
refusal to pay, except to the extent of the loss of a 
sale. Littlefield, therefore, was under no obligation, 
except obligations to Tourgee, the consideration of 
which, Tourgee best knows, to take up the draft when 
it came back protested, and pay the amount of it to 
Gray, in the absence of any demand hy Gray. 

Next, why should Swepson, after Tourgee's notes 
came to be his property, have made Tourgee a present 
of them ? The impression is sought to be made, that 
Littlefield passed them off to Swepson in payment of 



93 

money that he owed him. If so, then Tourgee became 
Swepson's debtor to the amount of the notes. Why 
should Swepson have released him from the debt with- 
out consideration ? Mr. Tourgee suggests the idea 
that they were barred by the statute of limitations, 
and that Swepson made him a present of them be- 
cause they had become worthless. Fie, Mr. Tourgee 1 
Would you have us believe that your character, among 
your friends, was at so low an ebb that they looked 
upon a bona fide debt due by you, but barred by the 
statute of limitations, as utterly worthless — as no bet- 
ter than old rags, or not so good ? You, too, who con- 
tained in yourself an embodiment of the great " moral 
ideas " party, and who, from pure conviction of duty 
alone, had taken upon yourself the missionary obliga- 
tion of saving and regenerating the barbarous people 
of North Carolina. But, aside from this view, so de- 
rogatory to Mr. Tourgee, let us consider for a moment, 
how Swepson would have viewed it. We all know that 
in practical life, creditors do not surrender to their 
debtors evidences of debt, because they may happen 
to be barred by the statute of limitations. They hold 
on to them in the hope that something may turn up, 
through which they may realize something. But 
supposing the notes were barred, still, Swepson would 
not have surrendered them without consideration, 
unless he had been a fool. When the notes were 
given, it was with an agreement written out on the 
face of the notes, that they should be secured by a 
deed of trust. Now, though the statute might have 



94 



run against the notes, yet it would not have run 
against the deed, which would, under the laws of most 
States, have taken the notes under its protection. 
City of Kenosha v. Lamson, 9 Wallace j City of Lexing- 
ton V. Butler, 14 Wallace. I do not mean to express 
an opinion, that Swepson, by bringing a suit in equity 
to compel Tourgee to execute the deed of trust, could 
have thus cut him out of his plea of the statute j but 
I do mean to say, that ninety-nine lawyers out of every 
hundred to whom he might have ai)plied for advice, 
would have told him that there was too much show for 
his winning, for him to throw away his notes. 

Finally, why sbould Swepson have charged this 
money in the corruption account between himself and 
Littlefield — and charged it, too, at the very moment 
when it was advanced *? It is not suggested that he 
was an enemy to Tourgee, and inspired by a desire to 
injure him ; on the contrary, Tourgee represents him 
to have been his friend. Yet, if it did not belong to 
the corruption account, it is difficult to conceive of any 
other inspiration that could have induced him to put 
it there. 

The memorandum of the transaction that was made 
by Tourgee at the time, and signed by a witness, is not 
entitled to a feather's weight. If the transaction was 
intended as a device for concealing a payment for 
lobby services, just some such trick as this would have 
been resorted to, to conceal the matter. If the thing 
had been perfectly fair and such a matter as was fit for 
the light of day, the chances would have been against 



95 

the making of any such memorandum to be signed by 
a witness. It would have been wholly unnecessary, 
and would necessarily have been an indication of dis- 
trust of Littlefield. 

He (Littlefield) had acted in the matter nothing but 
the part of a disinterested friend, involving his credit 
to a certain extent for his friend, without consider- 
ation ; and after his friendly interposition, for Tourgee 
to have turned on him and said, ^' we must have all 
this in writing and witnessed," would have been a poor 
return to make him. 

Mr. Tourgee will have to make a very different ex- 
planation from that which he has made, before the 
public will believe that be has disconnected himself 
from Swepson and Littlefield and their corrupt ar- 
rangement. The multitude of disconnected facts upon 
which his explanation is made to turn, reminds one of 
Artemus Ward's reply to the Mormon ladies : ^' Yes, 
ladies, it is the muchness of the thing that I object to." 
The ^^muchness^^ of Mr. Tourgee's explanation will be 
sure to arrest attention. 



H h^ ^0 












r^Q^ 







0° 











.^* Z,^^'- v./ .'i^SfA'o V,^\ ; 





V<i- 




































i-"-'*. 








V" ^ o « o ^ V . qV 






